Students have been historically one of the most difficult groups for a census to count, in part because they’re always on the move, but also because they don’t always know where they should call home.

“Many of them think of home as where they should be counted, or they don’t understand the importance of the census count in the community that they live in or go to school in,” said Bill Andrews, manager of the local census office. “An excellent example of this is Ames, Iowa.”

To make sure every community member is counted, the census bureau will have on-campus census questionnaire assistance and will go door-to-door to follow up on unreturned census forms.

In order to get all of this accomplished, the local census office will be hiring — at $11.75 an hour, plus 50 cents a mile reimbursement for any mileage incurred.

To do the job on campus, the census is recruiting students.

“We like to hire people to work where they live,” Andrews said.

The census will hire about 1.1 million temporary workers nationwide, and about 5,000 in Iowa, said Rich Gerdes, assistant regional census manager at the Kansas City bureau.

“Probably in Story County in general we’ll be hiring somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 people,” Andrews said. “People can work from five to 40 hours a week depending on the operation we’re doing.”

“There are about half a dozen operations that will go on between now and the end of August,” Andrews said.

In communities where post office boxes are the main delivery method of mail, teams of workers will go door to door with forms.

“We’ll take roughly 400 people to go out in these communities in small teams,” Andrews said. “They will take a census questionnaire to every house in that county.”

In Ames, census-takers will blitz student housing during the last week in April, in order to follow up on mailed census forms that have not been returned.

“We’re going to mail this out and [students] will probably be going on Spring Break,” Gerdes said.

Historically, Iowans have handled census procedures well, and the state leads the return ratio, with approximately 80 percent of census forms completed and returned to the Census Bureau.

But that still leaves people uncounted, and with Iowa on the cusp of losing one of its five congressional seats, every additional person counted helps.

“It’s critical that Iowa’s census count everyone,” Andrews said.

Interested in Applying?

Start by calling 866-861-2010.

“It asks them to input their ZIP code number,” Andrews said. “Once they do that, the call is transferred directly to our office.”

Applicants will also take a 28-question test over basic skills such as reading and math.

“I would hope that most Iowa State students could score 100 on it,” Andrews said.

Gerdes said any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 is eligible.

“There really isn’t a due date, but the quicker the better,” Gerdes said. “We’re going to start hiring probably mid-February.”