With a year to go before the official count begins, an army of 1,700 newly hired Census Bureau workers is already descending on subdivisions, mountain chalets and rural farms in Colorado and Wyoming to verify and tabulate every housing address.
In Colorado alone, that’s an estimated 2.1 million homes.
The census workers include a retired Alaska Air pilot, a laid-off human-relations manager and a small-business owner.
One of their team leaders, Richard Funke, is a homebuilder who learned about the census job from an ad inside AARP magazine. “I’m sure you know that things are very slow in housing,” Funke said.
Between now and mid-June, the census workers will travel the state and punch in the addresses to a hand-held GPS unit. The address inventory will be used to send out census forms next year, said Sam Batey, manager of the Denver Census Bureau office.
At stake for Colorado is about $850 per resident in federal funds for a smorgasbord of programs, said state demographer Elizabeth Garner. Each missed household of four costs the state about $2,500 a year, she said.
Today starts the one-year countdown to the mailing of census forms to Colorado’s residents. Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien will sign a proclamation this morning, and the city of Denver will host a countdown party this afternoon.
Monday, the last group of 20 workers was being trained on the GPS monitors in the Census Bureau office in Jefferson County.
Trainer Terry Thompson said the economic free-for-all has provided the Census Bureau with an “accomplished” workforce. The 20 included only one student.
Canvassers in the metro area earn between $13 and $16.75 an hour, said Census Bureau spokeswoman Deborah Cameron.
Funke said they walk the neighborhoods, from porch to porch. Each address takes a minute or two to punch into the machine. He said they wear large badges and knock on doors so they don’t spook residents.
Batey said this is the first year that the bureau is tabulating all addresses electronically.
During the last census, in 2000, several cities and counties appealed their population numbers because they thought the Census Bureau had missed entire subdivisions.
