Still without professional experience, the young Miguel Patriota Panza, 20, saw the 2022 Demographic Census as an opportunity to enter the job market.
A resident of Vila da Penha, north of Rio de Janeiro, the media student advanced in the selection process with 183,000 temporary vacancies for census takers.
These professionals will have the task of visiting 75 million households across the country soon, starting on August 1, when the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) plans to start the survey interviews.
The Census is considered the most detailed work on the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the Brazilian population.
“I always thought it was cool when I saw IBGE and Census data at school,” says Panza. “Working on the Census is also an opportunity to earn my own money,” adds the young man, who lives with his parents.
Like the other candidates who advanced in the selection process for the vacancies of census takers, Panza participates this week in a face-to-face training promoted by the IBGE.
This stage of preparation began this Monday (18) in about 10,000 classrooms throughout Brazil. The training of census takers runs until Friday (22). Those who will collect data from peoples such as indigenous peoples and quilombolas will have an extra day of class on Monday (25).
Retired returns after 1970 Census
Retired economist and accountant José Roberto Castro, 72, also participates in the activities. In a very different situation from that recorded by Panza, Castro sees the Census as a gateway to the job market.
“I’m retired and I saw that the exam for a census taker came. I took the assessment to see if I would pass and if I could work a little. At 72, we can’t get a job,” he says.
A resident of Copacabana, south of Rio, Castro says he hasn’t worked since 2004, when he left a vacancy as an accountant to retire.
The role of census taker is nothing new, as he performed the same task in the 1970 Census, at the age of 20. What has changed since then, he acknowledges, was the use of technology for research.
“In 1970, there was no cell phone, no computer, none of that. You would receive a pile of paper with the questionnaires and go out to do the interviews”, he recalls.
In Castro’s view, the biggest challenge for the census taker is to convince part of the population to answer the IBGE’s questions, even if the information collected is confidential and protected by secrecy.
“The difficult thing today, due to the violence, is getting to the homes. In 1970, it was already difficult, but I didn’t have that much difficulty. There were even people who said: ‘Come here, let’s have a whiskey’. I said: ‘No, I’m working'”, he remembers, smiling.
The difficult thing today, due to the violence, is getting to the homes. In 1970, it was already difficult, but I didn’t have that much difficulty. There were even people who said: ‘Come here, let’s have a whiskey’. I would say, ‘No, I’m working’.
Opportunity for those unable to find a job
Andrea Antunes Lopes, 49, is also taking part in the training to work as a census taker for the second time.
The resident of Morro do Cantagalo, south of Rio, held the position in the most recent edition of the Census, held in 2010. At the time, she visited homes in communities in the south of Rio.
According to Andrea, what weighed heavily when applying for 2022 was the difficulty of finding a job, in addition to the experience lived 12 years ago.
Andrea says that she works informally in tutoring classes for children. However, the number of students has decreased in recent times.
“I couldn’t get a job with a formal contract,” he says. “The Census opportunity was the one that came up for me to earn some income”, he adds. She says that it is necessary to have “a game of waist” to work as a census taker.
The survey conducted by the IBGE also serves as an income opportunity for Sérgio de Oliveira Lima, 44. A resident of Copacabana, he says he worked as a salesman in an electronics store until 2019. With the arrival of the pandemic the following year, he could not find a new job .
“The first point that weighed on the registration was the financial one. I’ve been out of work since the beginning of the pandemic. I couldn’t get back to the market, and this opportunity ended up painting”, he says.
“I studied geography and history and graduated in social communication. I really like this type of research, I’ve done similar work on other occasions”, he adds.
Lima understands that “the receptivity” of the residents is the biggest challenge for the census taker’s work. “The issue of violence is very much on people’s minds. But good publicity about the Census helps at this point”, he analyzes.
How to identify census takers
In an attempt to help the population, IBGE presented a booklet on how to identify census takers and avoid possible setbacks.
Professionals will wear a Census cap and an institute vest. The vest will have an identification badge exposed on the front, on the left for those looking at the piece from the front.
In addition, agents will have a DMC (mobile collection device), the electronic equipment that records interview data.
Face-to-face, online or telephone interviews
The 2022 Census will have three approaches to filling out the questionnaires. In addition to face-to-face sessions, there will be online and telephone options. The two alternative approaches, however, will not dispense with some face-to-face contact.
To respond via the internet, the informant must wait for the census taker to visit, who will register an email and cell phone. In this modality, the resident will have seven days to complete the questionnaire.
Telephone collection will be a solution in cases where residents are not found at home during the census taker’s visit, says the IBGE.
This modality can also be used when the informant cannot receive the agent at the time of the interview. Thus, an appointment can be made for the collection of information in person or by telephone.
The salaries of census takers are variable, depending on individual production. The more interviews they do, the more they get. You can simulate compensation on the 2022 Census website.
The weekly workload is indicated in 25 working hours. The estimated duration of the contracts is up to three months, but there is a possibility of extension, if necessary.
“We will begin the face-to-face training of census takers, but they have been training for a long time,” said Cynthia Damasceno, IBGE census training manager, in a note released this Monday morning.
“We prepared a course in EAD (distance learning) with fundamental concepts of the Census and this content was included in the simplified selection process test”, he pointed out.
“The census takers also went through a self-instructional stage with the previous reading of the Census Taker’s Manual and the Interview Manual, available on the 2022 Census website. They have already started training well before being in the classroom”, he added.
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