Census finds no shortage of job-seekers

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Census Bureau says it is having little trouble finding census workers for its 2010 survey in a struggling economy.

With temporary jobs that pay between $10 and $20 per hour, applicants with advanced degrees and years of professional experience are flocking to sign up for the positions, which will give U.S. labor market a slight jolt next year, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

"What we're seeing now is blowing our socks off," Wendy Button, the decennial recruiting chief for the bureau, told the newspaper. "We're seeing a huge response to very little media."

Census officials told the Journal that when they hired address canvassers last summer they had to cut off applications two months earlier than planned due to the overwhelming response -- in Charlotte, N.C., for instance, about 40,000 people put their names on waiting lists to take the census' employment test.

The newspaper said the final number of hires won't be known until the number of U.S. residents who return their census forms is determined. The forms will be mailed out early next year. But California's census offices told the Journal they plan to hire about 110,000 workers between January and June.