Census workshop to prepare potential workers for test

BARSTOW • People looking for work may find a temporary job with the United States Census, if they pass a test.

Staff with the U.S. Census Bureau will be in Barstow on Monday holding two workshops to prepare potential census takers and office clerks, age 18 and older, for the tests they must take in order to land a job for the 2010 Census. The higher a person scores on the test the better chance he or she has of being hired, said Jack Carey, the census manager for the Yucaipa office. The bureau is primarily looking for census takers to interview residents in their own community.

“The big push will be out in the field,” Carey said, adding that transportation is a requirement for workers. “What the census likes to do is hire them from their neighborhoods so they know the neighborhoods and they know the people and we’re getting a representation of the neighborhoods out there.”

The salary range for workers is between $11.25 an hour to $18.50 an hour. Workers will be tested on basic skills such as English, mathematics and grammar as well as clerical skills, Carey said. A passing grade is 70 percent. The jobs generally last between one to eight weeks.

At Monday’s workshop, recruiters will be administering practice tests, giving people 30-minutes to complete them, said Juan Rosiles, recruiting manager for the Yucaipa office. Attendants will grade their own tests and the recruiters will be on hand to help with questions they struggled on.

“We found on Tuesday another workshop in San Bernardino is people were not lining up decimal points,” he said. “People haven’t done math in so long they forget what they have to do.”

At the workshops, people who want to take the test are asked to register, but if space is available people can come in without a reservation, Rosiles said. Job seekers are required to bring two forms of identification when they take their test.

Census takers began working on the 2010 Census in October 2008, confirming peoples’ addresses nationwide. Questionnaires will be sent out and from January to about August 2010 more census takers will be interviewing residents who didn’t mail them in, according to Carey. Each office is currently searching for 600 to 1,000 people to work the duration of the census.

The U.S. Census workshops will be at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Monday in Noonan Hall at St. Joseph Catholic Church at 525 East Mountain View Street. The test will be Nov. 16 at the same location.  

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com