For 14 straight weeks, U.S. unemployment claims have topped more than 1 million; almost 20 million are collecting state benefits for the jobless, though that number surely undercounts economic displacement. (For instance, this week 728,000 people filed for federal aid for workers, such as the self-employed, who don’t qualify for traditional unemployment checks.)
That 20 million includes me. The pandemic, or the Trump, Cuomo, and de Blasio administrations’ responses to it, has already erased one job for which I’d been accepted: the New York City Department of Education canceled this year’s Teaching Fellows program (designed to get mid-career professionals into classrooms while working for their teaching credential).
As a fallback I signed up to work as an enumerator for the U.S. Census Bureau. The pandemic put that job on hold for three months, but two weeks ago I got fingerprinted, the next step in a ponderous hiring process that might extend through the summer. Now I’m wondering If politics will erase this job, too.
I felt lucky that my unemployment rolled around during the federal government’s once-a-decade population count. I used to teach a bit about the census, in an undergrad survey class covering American journalism history. Princeton historian Paul Starr, in a chapter from his 2004 book, posits that government policies as much as free markets or tech innovation created conditions from which U.S. journalism institutions sprang.
As evidence for his thesis Starr cites the creation of the national census. From its roots in the Roman Empire, a census generally meant two things for citizens, both bad: governments wanted to impress sons for their armies, collect taxes for their empires. The United States, as part of its foundation as a representative democracy, turned that notion on its head: enumerating where people live helps citizens accrue government power, either through their representatives (apportioning of Congressional seats; redistricting) or through more rational distribution of government funds (now totaling $1.5 trillion a year).
The U.S. Census Bureau is designed to be apolitical; by law, its representatives cannot share data they collect with other agencies (the Internal Revenue Service, say, or Citizenship and Immigration Services). For 220 years, under all presidents and parties, the agency has maintained rigorous independence.
Such traditions mean nothing to the Trump administration, which will destroy any precedent or guideline if destruction will benefit the president or his minions. Government data are not to be collected or disseminated for public benefit but weaponized for partisan or private gain.
Thus U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the Census Bureau, sought to add a “citizenship” question to the 2020 census — a tactic to deter immigrants, minorities, and others likely to vote for Democrats from responding, leading to a count weighted in favor of Republicans. The Supreme Court last year ruled against Ross, and Trump bailed on the citizenship question.
This week the administration created two high-ranking positions for the Census Bureau: a deputy policy director and his senior advisor. That meant the bureau will have not three political appointees, as it has for years, but five. The White House filled those jobs with a political scientist who voiced support for Trump in his impeachment fight, and an ex-Marine and advisor to a State Island GOP congressional candidate (Joey Saladino) who ran a race- and gender-baiting campaign.
Experts theorized the White House’s goal: “political interference that could undermine a comprehensive effort to reach historically undercounted population groups,” in the words of a former House staffer who oversaw Census work.
Almost four in 10 U.S. households have yet to respond to the 2020 count, either by mail or, new this year, online. Typically such households are the hardest to reach; they’re more likely to be young, poor, renters, and minorities. The Census typically hires thousands of temporary “enumerators” to knock on doors, ensure as accurate a count as possible. The Covid-19 pandemic has postponed that tactic by months, making the count even harder.
“It seems the White House is trying to get some political control over the census at this sensitive time,” said Kenneth Prewitt, a former bureau director, “someone who can take direct orders from the White House which influence the census in a fashion that will produce the likelihood of higher counts in red states.”
The New York Times quoted an anonymous senior census official who said the appointees have already “repeatedly questioned the need for census operations that focus on accurately counting the nation’s hardest-to-reach residents.”
Prewitt called it a “frightening development,” adding, “Two decades ago, I said it was impossible for the White House to manipulate data in such a way as to affect the distribution of seats in Congress. I was wrong. If this plays out as we fear, this would be a partisan use of the census that is unprecedented.”
Statisticians objected, too.
I’ve been hired, pending my background check. But if the appointees succeed at limiting the count, how many enumerators will be needed? Will my job evaporate? I didn’t think it possible, but the president has found another avenue down which to deliver distress.
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