A memorandum from the Office of the Inspector General published late Thursday and dated Tuesday. Comments refer to “on hiring and retaining sufficient number of field staff during the shortened non-response tracking operation (NRFU).”
It said census officials expected 300,000 field workers would be needed by the end of August, but only 220,000 had trained and worked.
The Census Bureau, although it does not dispute the inspector general’s findings, said in a statement to CNN that it was “pleased with the progress” of the follow-up response so far.
It said the hiring gap is offset by higher productivity and found that it offers bonus payouts to particularly productive employees.
“Our census people work more hours and complete more cases than we had planned,” the statement said, calling their own hiring goals “aggressive.”
The agency also said it adds additional training sessions and that it “has more than 100,000 in training as ready to be trained.”
“While it is antidote and answer for, enumerators to not complete the onboarding process, the Bureau stated that the attrition rate – at some points in the hiring and training process is higher than it had expected,” the memo says.
Nationally, about 64% of households responded to the 2020 census.
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