End of 2010 Census means end of job for many

By Michael Powell

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It was a finely honed machine, this United States Census team, and it had a good run. But in the coming days and weeks, many of its members will experience the pain of unemployment — once again.

Christine Egan, a 31-year-old massage therapist, says her census job offered shelter from the economic storm last year. “The economy was terrible; there was nothing,” she says. “I’ve already gone through ‘horrific,’ so I’m immunized.” She smiles, optimism almost extending to her eyes. “It must be better now, right?”

When the Census Bureau hired upward of 700,000 Americans over the last two years — most in the last six months — it landed more experienced workers with more sophisticated skills than any time in recent memory. This was the unintended upside of the nastiest recession of the last 70 years.

Now, its decennial work largely done, the Census Bureau is shedding hundreds of thousands of workers — about 225,000 in just the last few weeks, enough to account for a jot or two in the unemployment rate, say federal economists. Most of those remaining will be gone by August; a few will last into September.

In past decades, the bureau faced a challenge just keeping workers around to close up shop, as most dashed for new jobs that might pay better. Not this time around. Jobs remain scarce. In Rhode Island, the unemployment rate stands at 12.3 percent, higher than a year ago. The national rate, too, has not budged.

As most census workers have nowhere to go, rushed farewells are rare. Self-reflection, and a touch of anxiety, mark the mood.

“Typically, at this point in the process, we’re losing a lot of people because they’re taking jobs,” said Kathleen Ludgate, the regional director in Boston. “I wish we had that problem now.”

Ms. Ludgate receives notes from departing workers, some by e-mail, others in ink. They thank her for the chance to learn something about themselves and their country. They write to say their confidence had picked up, that they can again meet the gaze of friends and neighbors.

These are the missives of hard-working people who found themselves in a tighter spot than they ever expected, and who came to view census work as a lifeline.

Many are middle-aged. The census offices in Providence and Bridgeport, Conn., offer a sea of gray-haired men and women in neat office garb. They work with an intensity that suggests they would rather concentrate on the task at hand than the fast-approaching end.

Sherri Wood worked for the schools in Bridgeport before taking a chance a few years back and leaving to try something new. The recession broke like a thunder cloud, and she took a job nearly two years ago in community affairs for the census.

The money was not great. She began mowing her own lawn and making her lunches, but it wasn’t all bad.

“I learned so much, I really loved it,” said Ms. Wood, 45, who will leave in the next few weeks. “Things will work. I pray for that.”

Bureaucratic quirks make life in this recession a nerve-racking ride. Many departing census workers will be eligible for unemployment, although by no means all of them.

Some census employees, particularly those who knocked on doors — known as enumerators — worked in fits and starts. They were dispatched intensively, then laid off, then rehired.

Unemployment rules are a crazy quilt, with no two states quite the same.

“If a worker was in the last tier of long-term unemployment, they might not be able to go back to unemployment,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project. “They may have been better off not taking this job.”

Perhaps so. But in the Providence office, workers speak of a certain joy that comes with applying their minds.

What is left of the Providence team works out of a ground-floor office that overlooks a cemetery, and on a recent morning, workers checked tallies and researched vacant buildings. Bob Hamilton, the director, introduced his staff.

Ms. Egan, the massage therapist, with a degree in history from the University of Rhode Island, was his assistant field manager. Vada Seccareccia, an architect with an undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College, is his payroll manager. And the soft-spoken young mother who oversees the clerks? Yasmin Mercedes has years of retail experience and, if she can’t find work, plans to go to college this fall.

“You look for people who had certain skills in a previous life,” Mr. Hamilton says. “It’s not hard to find them, not with this god-awful economy.”

Angular, with close-cropped gray hair and a voice laden with hard New England vowels, Mr. Hamilton, too, is a temporary worker with a backstory. He was vice president for a retailer until he took some time off in 2007, his mortgage paid and bank account strong. Then the economy tanked, as did his retirement fund. He tried to return only to find that when it came to finding a job, the rug had been pulled out from under him.

“I was reluctant to do this at first,” he says. “I finally said to myself: This isn’t going any better. I better take the next step.”

That pattern repeats across the country. In south Connecticut, a laid-off executive for a large insurer helps coordinate the door-to-door counters. In Orange County, Calif., unemployed real estate lawyers work as counters, and the office is managed by a down-on-her-luck corporate trainer.

In the census office in Worcester, Mass., the guy who took the tech services job acknowledged quietly that he had a degree in nuclear engineering from M.I.T.

Wages vary by regional cost of living and responsibilities. A census worker might get $17 an hour in Providence, $23 in Boston or $12.25 in Jackson, Miss.

Mr. Hamilton has only to look at his Red Sox calendar to see the days ticking down. He would like to find a job back in retail management. He has a sneaking suspicion that his age — he’s 59 — works against him. “That’s my goal,” he says. “Whether I get there or not is something else.”

Every member of his team sounds reshaped, by the experience and by the recessionary storm howling outside.

Ms. Egan smiles and says she knows she can survive. When she was jobless and counted quarters to pay for groceries, she took a job as a boat deckhand and a bartender. She does not want to go back to giving massages full time, though; she found she is a natural at motivating people.

So she has polished her résumé. “We all understand, if you have another opportunity, take it,” she says, more cheerfully than you might expect. “We’re on a sinking ship.”

Mr. Hamilton walks a visitor to the door. He turns and looks at his domain, and says, more to himself: “You could start a hell of a business with these folks.”

URL to Original Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/business/12census.html?