Census’ job total is absurd

The Obama Administration is fooling people when it says tens of thousands of jobs have been created by the Census Bureau — jobs that are said to be a useful bridge over tough times.

They are, truth be told, very short bridges — and don’t nearly span the wide, rough waters people like me are facing.

Many of those jobs — 66,000 of the 290,000 new jobs created in April were Census jobs — cannot even be characterized as part-time work. I should know. I was hired in March as a Census Bureau enumerator in Brooklyn at $18.75 an hour.

I am unemployed and was very happy to get the job.

But after three days of paid training, I have only been called to work a total of 10 hours over two days since I was hired. Many in my training class of 80 people are equally under-utilized. In fact, I heard that only 17 were actually needed for most of the project we were hired for.

During one night’s work, counting visitors to a soup kitchen, there appeared to be more census workers (around 20) than people to count.

It seems to me that the Census Bureau is hiring way more people than needed — while at the same time doling out only a few half days of work to many employees — perhaps to put a shine on the number of new jobs created.

It’s true that the Census Web site warns that work availability is “highly variable.” However, it seems to me that while this type of scheduling may be of some use to some people, the work offered cannot reasonably be characterized as a job in the sense that the government is portraying.