Census jobs provide short but welcome opportunity

[ClarkUSA]

WASHINGTON – As census workers gear up to count us, they are counting themselves lucky to be employed.

This once-a-decade temporary work force is giving a timely boost to the battered job market. Census workers accounted for nearly a third of the jobs added in March, when hiring occurred at the fastest pace in three years.

Over the next two months, another 600,000 to 700,000 census jobs will be added, putting $10 to $25 an hour into the pockets of some desperate job seekers.

Although these jobs will only last through mid-July, economists say they will provide a fortuitous stream of income to families and act as an employment bridge until summer, when more private employers are expected to ramp up hiring... the impact of these jobs cannot be overstated for people who were out of work.

"Census to the rescue," said 24-year-old Cierra Edwards of Toledo, Ohio. "I was so far behind. Rent started stacking up, bills, diapers."

She hopes her job as office operations supervisor will last at least through the summer and make it easier to land another job... Housewright, whose disc jockey business in the Detroit area all but dried up... said the census work came at "exactly the right time." Housewright, 42, is hoping to land another government job, perhaps in homeland security, once his census job ends by early July... The nation added 162,000 jobs in March, 48,000 of which were census jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. The unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.7 percent for the third month in a row, largely because more people entered the work force... Economists do not expect the jobless rate to drop to something more normal — in the range of 5.5 percent to 6 percent — until the middle of this decade.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100404/ap_on_bi_ge/us_economy_census_jobs