Census Falling Short in O.C. Worker Pool : Population: U.S. agency also encounters difficulty attracting job applicants in other areas. It blames the low unemployment rate and a robust economy.

U.S. Census officials in California expressed concern Tuesday that the agency has failed so far to attract a large-enough pool of applicants to tap for the temporary work force needed to count heads in the state starting in April.

Census offices up and down the state have experienced problems finding workers to fill posts, with the situation particularly acute in urban sections of Northern California as well as Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, federal authorities said.

Although census officials had hoped to assemble a list of about 250,000 people to draw from when the tally kicks into high gear in April, only about 75,000 potential employees have signed up for nearly 40,000 jobs, census officials said.

“It’s widespread,” said Barbara Keller, the Los Angeles-based census recruiting coordinator in California. “We’re concerned, so we’re trying everything we can to recruit more people.”

As part of the once-a-decade head count, the U.S. Census Bureau pulls together an army of about 500,000 workers nationwide to fill temporary jobs as enumerators, clerical workers and data processors. Most of the positions last only a few months, with the bulk of the workers coming aboard next month as the agency begins the laborious task of tracking down residents who fail to mail back the census form by the first week of April.

Census officials in the state had hoped to develop a pool of applicants large enough to ensure that there would be no labor shortages. With the relatively modest wages (most posts pay about $7.50 an hour) and temporary nature of the jobs, many qualified employees have already moved on to other work by the time the Census Bureau calls. Others can’t be reached or simply decide not to take a position. Still others take the jobs, then later quit.

In Los Angeles County, authorities set a goal of 68,000 people in the applicant pool, but have attracted just 22,000 so far for the 9,000 to 12,000 jobs that will be filled in the weeks to come, Keller said. San Diego County has experienced a similar shortage, with 6,000 applicants instead of the goal of 18,000.

The situation is even worse in Orange County, where a list of about 3,500 workers has been compiled, far short of the 15,000 that census officials had hoped for, Keller said.

“We’re starting to see our applicant pool thin out, so we’re concerned that if this rate continues over the next two or three weeks we won’t have enough workers come census day,” said Fernando Tafoya, manager of the Santa Ana district office.

“If this continues, we’ll almost be at the mercy of people’s good will,” Tafoya said. “We’ll be hoping that people don’t resign or get other jobs.”

The dearth of applicants for the temporary jobs is probably due to the economic vitality and low unemployment rate in the state, Keller and other census officials speculate. In particular, urban areas such as Orange County enjoy some of the most robust economies in the nation.

If a large enough work force isn’t assembled, the shortfall could pose problems, authorities said. The counting process could be slowed, raising costs, because district offices would have to remain open longer than anticipated.

Moreover, any delay in tallying the populace could color results, Keller said. Census workers might be put in a position of arriving at homes months after the official April 1 census day, only to find the occupants have moved on without being recorded, she suggested.

“What we’re trying to do is get a snapshot of America on April 1,” Keller said. “If people have moved or something has changed by the time we reach them, it creates problems.”

She said the agency is redoubling its recruitment efforts, taking out advertisements in newspapers, sponsoring public service announcements on the radio and “hitting the pavement” with recruiters. In Orange County, for example, census officials plan to host a job fair at various sites around the county on March 31.

Census officials in Washington were either unavailable or declined to comment on the agency’s recruitment efforts across the country. But officials in various regional offices reported a variety of symptoms similar to California’s, although not as acute.

“In our region overall, we’re doing fine,” said Malee Craft, recruitment coordinator in the Denver region, where there are 50,000 applicants for 18,000 jobs in eight states. “But we do have some areas where our pools are lower than expected.”

Roy McCoy, a spokesman for the Chicago regional office, said the Census Bureau has attracted about 35% of the applicants it had hoped for, but the recruitment efforts have just recently kicked off in several parts of the three-state region of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

“I think you’ll find everyone is running a little bit under what they’d hoped for all across the United States,” he said.