This year's Census does not inquire about employment status, so it will not provide any data about the Great Recession.
Directly, anyway.
But indirectly, this front-page New York Times story about Census workers provides an anecdotal glimpse of who's been doing Census work the last few months.
Many are highly skilled/educated, but unemployed, people who are eager to work a temporary job for $12.25 to $23 an hour with no benefits.
They are, according to the story, "more experienced workers with more sophisticated skills than any time in recent memory, ... the unintended upside of the nastiest recession of the last 70 years."
Details, below.
Times reporter Michael Powell visited several Census offices in New England and found a former vice president in retailing running the Providence, RI, office, assisted by a former architect with a bachelor's from Bryn Mawr, a former massage therapist with a history degree from URI, and a woman with years of retail experience who's heading back to school this fall.
In the Worcester, MA, office, the technical services guy has a degree in nuclear engineering from MIT.
The story adds that elsewhere unemployed real estate lawyers, a laid-off executive for a large insurer, and a down-on-her-luck corporate trainer are doing Census work.
The manager of the Providence office told the Times:
You look for people who had certain skills in a previous life. It’s not hard to find them, not with this god-awful economy.
Again, this story is just a snapshot -- every Census office has similar stories of people who never thought they'd be unemployed doing temporary Census work for a few months.
The Census is winding down, so they all will again be unemployed in a few weeks.
At this point in previous Censuses, many workers would have left as they found better and/or more permanent jobs.
Not so this year, people are hanging on to the end:
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.
snip
"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."
Soon they will all be gone, and looking for the few real jobs out there.
The best quote comes at the end, as the Providence office manager commends his staff to future employers:
You could start a hell of a business with these folks.
The Census may well have had its best workforce ever this year, which will hopefully result in the best and most accurate count ever.
But the reason for that is that we're still in the worst recession since the Depression, with millions of skilled/educated people unable to find real jobs.
That is the No. 1 issue, and the sooner Obama and the Democrats do something effective to resolve it, the better.
For their good, and the country's.