Looking for work? So are Deborah Hayes, who lost her job at Saturn in Tinley Park after the dealership closed last year, and Joan Frazer, who wants to supplement her part-time job as a substitute teacher.
The two Mokena residents joined a handful of others last week at the Mokena Public Library to apply for a position thousands will soon hold across the Southland: census worker.
“It’s evening and weekends, so the hours fit in perfectly with my work,” Frazer said. “You can’t find a lot of jobs like that.”
The U.S. Census Bureau is recruiting about 14,000 workers throughout the Southland, said Jennifer Sciacca, the bureau’s regional recruiter for Wisconsin and Illinois.
While much of that recruiting has already been done, the number of needed workers is likely to go up in April once the bureau determines which homes didn’t send back their questionnaires.
“We wanted to be conservative with our initial testing,” Sciacca said. “We based our recruiting numbers on actual hiring for the 2000 census.”
Census workers are the rank and file of the massive 2010 census operation, knocking on doors and helping residents fill out their questionnaires. Hayes, who worked two previous special censuses in the 1990s in Mokena and Tinley Park, said the job takes patience but makes for interesting days.
“You need someone who pays attention to detail, someone who’s willing to walk in the rain and the snow,” she said.
With unemployment at historic highs, there’s been a big rush to apply for census jobs in some areas, Sciacca said. But recruiting has been sluggish in other areas, a quirk that Sciacca thinks might foreshadow a dip in those towns’ headcounts this year.
“Maybe there’s been a shift in population,” she said. “The response rates are reflective of those changes.”
Have questions about snagging a census job? Here’s everything you need to know.
How do I apply for a job?
Visit www.census.gov or call (866) 861-2010 to find out where you can take the census worker test.
Who is eligible for a job?
Applicants must be at least 18, have a Social Security number, have a valid driver’s license and be able to speak, read and write English.
How much will I make?
Pay for Southland census workers starts at $17.50 an hour. Jobs run for two to six weeks, and workers are on the job 20 to 40 hours a week.
Will taking a census job affect my unemployment benefits?
That depends on a number of things, including your employment history and how long you’ve been collecting benefits, an Illinois Department of Employment Security spokesman said.
In general, you can earn half of your weekly unemployment check before your benefits are reduced, and then they’re reduced on a dollar-by-dollar basis.
So if you’re getting $300 in unemployment weekly and your census job also pays $300 a week, your unemployment check will be reduced to $150 weekly.
Does the Census Bureau hire people with criminal records?
The government runs a background check on all applicants and determines whether to hire people with criminal records on a case-by-case basis.
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