Any (census) takers?

By Ken Miller (contact)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010 | 11:20 a.m.

Gotta hand it to Obama: He did create jobs this year. Too bad most of them won’t exist by mid-summer. Yes, it’s a good thing the U.S. Census Bureau gave temporary jobs to those who desperately needed both work and a reason to get out of bed in the morning, but give us a break—of the 431,000 jobs created nationwide in May, more than 410,000 of those were census takers. Hardly a bragging right for the administration. Those waiting for any kind of turnaround to the Great Recession had to settle instead for the fact that 10 years had passed since 2000, and that 700,000 census jobs would be created, 6,000 of those in Nevada alone. But everyone knew it wouldn’t last long, and now we learn these jobs will eliminated ahead of schedule in many states, including ours. Leo Cardenas, media specialist with the U.S. Census Bureau’s Denver office, says the bureau was budgeted to wrap things up by the end of July, but because data collection has gone so efficiently, most workers will be getting pink slips by the first week of July. For Las Vegas, which already has an unemployment rate of 14.2 percent, one of the highest in the nation, the early departure of those jobs could not come at a worse time. Of course, those soon-to-be-former census takers could perhaps use their door-to-door skills in another line of work. Avon, anyone?