06.05.2010 Original publish date
07.29.2015 page format update
Government Needs to Come to Their ‘Census’
original article written by Net Advisor™
Government is temporarily employing a massive amount of workers with cost overruns and waste. This reminds us that government needs to manage taxpayers’ money more diligently.
WASHINGTON DC. There is now over a half-million (564,000) people temporarily hired for the government’s 2010 census (Source: BLS.gov).
This works out to be 1 census worker for every 544 people based on 2009 estimated U.S. population of 307 million. This includes infants, minor children, otherwise those living in the same residence.
In 2004, the estimated cost for the 2010 census was $11 billion (Source: GAO). If costs were fixed at $11 Billion that would work out to be $19,503.55 per census worker ($11 billion divided by 546,000). Now the workers won’t be getting all this money. This includes all the paper, offices, phones, expenses, including meals and transportation costs to perform this job.
If the actual census takes 6 months (180 days) to finally complete, that means the average census worker would only need to contact 3 people a day [544 people (cited above) divided by 180 days to complete the census]. If three people lived in the same residence that is all the worker would have to do to meet the daily goal.
According to a May 2010 Inspector General’s report on the Census, there are only 47 million households to visit (please see page 3 of the actual report, located on page 10 when viewing the report in Adobe PDF). Based on the Inspector General’s report, we can now more accurately calculate that each census worker needs to contact (rounded up) to 84 people (47 million households divided by 560,000 census workers) over 180 days which works out to roughly 2 verified people per day (180 days divided by 84 people each census worker).
As it turns out, as of March 25, 2010, the cost of the census is now running around $15 billion (Source: GAO). Thus the cost and expenses is now running $26,595.74 per census worker, or about 36% higher cost than the GAO projected in 2004.
The May Inspector General’s audit found some interesting facts:
- “More than 100,000 “address canvassers” were reimbursed a combined $83 million for driving more than 150 million miles as they verified residential addresses.”
- “The Census Bureau also trained workers who performed little or no work.”
- “Roughly 10,200 of the temporary hires did no work but earned a combined $3.4 million for attending training.”
- “An additional 5,028 employees completed training and earned a combined $2.2 million, but worked for less than a day.”
- The “Census Bureau (also spent) $2.5 million for advertising time during (the) Super Bowl.”
- “According to the bureau, it costs around $85 million in follow-up efforts to raise the response rate by just 1%. The bureau says sending workers door-to-door costs more than $3,000 a pop.”
— Source: Washington Post, 03-17, 2010, and Komo News Channel 4 Seattle, Washington, 03-15-2010 (full report – PDF).
The report also said that the Census Bureau really doesn’t know how much it will cost tax payers to count people. This is just an example of how government is not considering how to stay within budget, watch waste of tax payer money. In fact, when it comes to government spending, accountability and money management never seems to be an issue up for real consideration.
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