After halting some work because of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau will resume operations this week from a handful of its 248 field offices around the country, part of a “phased restart” aimed at getting the 2020 decennial count accomplished.
“Their work doesn’t involve contact with the public,” he said. “We’re instructing census staff to not even knock on the door. They will just leave the census packet.”
The bureau is providing face masks and gloves for employees, who Cook said will undergo a virtual training to ensure they follow appropriate social distancing protocols and other health and safety guidance.
The bureau plans to resume work this week in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.
“We plan to examine and make adjustments weekly,” Cook said, when asked how soon the bureau could add more areas.
Typically, during the spring and summer of a census year, hundreds of thousands of workers fan out to public events and private homes to help publicize the count and encourage people to fill out the survey of who is living in their household on April 1.
But when the coronavirus shut the country down earlier this spring, the bureau suspended many census operations just as they were about to roll out on a mass scale.
This is the first decennial census in which most respondents are encouraged to fill out the form online. According to the bureau’s website, 56.8 percent of the nation has responded so far, which Cook said is ahead of predictions.
But following up with households that don’t respond generally involves in-person door-knocking.
In April, the Trump administration pushed the census data collection deadline from mid-August to Oct. 31, and asked Congress to approve a four-month delay in delivering the data for reapportionment, to April 30, 2021. The House Oversight Committee has yet to say whether it will approve the request.
Census data is also used for redistricting and to determine $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. The bureau said it is planning a four-month extension of the deadline for delivering redistricting data to states, to July 31, 2021.
This could cause a crunch for elections and redistricting in places that hold off-year statewide elections in 2021, such as Virginia and New Jersey, and some local jurisdictions. A four-month delay could mean they are unable to get information about districts and apportionment in time to hold primaries based on 2020 population data.
