Counting on jobs
More Census workers needed in Haskell County

By Pennie Embry, Staff Writer

STIGLER, Feb. 11 — With National Census Day only weeks away, the U.S. Census Bureau is ramping up its campaign to hire Haskell Country residents for 2010 Census jobs.

“The Census Bureau is actively hiring people who know and understand their communities, and we want people from Haskell County,” said Rose Mary Renya, a partnership specialist with the U.S. Department of Commerce Census Bureau.

“These are temporary, part time, local jobs,” said Sandie Rutherford, Smart Start coordinator, chair of the Haskell County Coalition and a driving force behind promoting the census locally. “We need Haskell County people working to bring money back to the state and to the county. This is an opportunity to perform an important service to our community.”

That important service involves helping census officials make an accurate count of people residing in Haskell County.

The U.S. Constitution requires that a national census takes place once every 10 years to count the country’s population and determine the number of seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The 2010 questionnaire takes approximately 10 minutes to complete, and households will be asked to provide important demographic information such as whether the housing unit is owned or rented, the address of the house, the number of people living in the house and the names, ages, gender and races of others living in the household.

That count and the answers to those questions bring federal money back to Oklahoma and Haskell County for school lunch and breakfast programs, special nutrition programs for women, infants and children, education programs, technology literacy programs, Head Start, Medicaid, children’s health insurance programs, highway transportation, foster care, unemployment insurance and much more.

For more on this story, pick up this week's Stigler News-Sentinel. To subscribe to the newspaper, call 918-967-4655.

This website and the contents therein copyright ©2010 News-Sentinel Inc. Downloading or reproduction of any material in whole or in part is prohibited without expressed permission from News Sentinel Inc.