Postal Workers to Test Census Collection in Two Southern Cities This Spring

The U.S. Census Bureau will test using mail carriers to collect census data in South Carolina and Alabama this spring, despite facing criticism over cost concerns and last-minute changes. The experimental program aims to determine if postal workers can more effectively gather household information for the 2030 census.

Despite facing skepticism about its practicality, the U.S. Census Bureau will move forward with an experimental program this spring that tests whether mail carriers can effectively collect census information in two southern communities as part of preparations for the 2030 population count.

Beginning in June, several dozen postal workers in Spartanburg, South Carolina and Huntsville, Alabama will conduct door-to-door visits to gather demographic information including race, ethnicity and household composition from residents who haven’t completed the test questionnaire online. The Census Bureau announced Monday that invitations for the online portion will be distributed to 154,600 residents in both locations starting May 1.

This experimental approach serves as a trial run for potential new strategies for the constitutionally mandated population count that occurs every ten years, which plays a crucial role in determining congressional representation and allocating federal funding.

“They typically think that it’s kind of a cool thing that they’re a little bit of a guinea pig,” said Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers.

The two cities will implement different versions of the program. In Spartanburg, 25 postal employees will incorporate census questions into their regular delivery routes, identifying themselves as postal workers while earning their standard pay of $28.79 per hour, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2024. Traditional census workers in that location receive $17.75 hourly.

Huntsville will take a different approach, recruiting 25 postal worker volunteers to conduct census interviews during off-duty hours on evenings and weekends. These workers will present themselves as Census Bureau staff and receive the same $19.75 hourly compensation as other census employees.

According to Renfroe, incorporating census duties into their daily responsibilities will simply become another factor that postal carriers consider alongside weather conditions, traffic patterns and mail volume when planning their workday.

“Letter carriers, they know their people,” he said. “You’ve got kind of some trust already built in there.”

The concept of utilizing postal workers for in-person census collection has circulated for many years among advocates who argue it would make use of an established workforce while capitalizing on mail carriers’ familiarity with neighborhood residents.

However, a 2011 Government Accountability Office analysis concluded that employing mail carriers for census work would not prove financially beneficial due to their substantially higher wages compared to temporary census staff.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose department supervises the Census Bureau, believes using postal workers could reduce costs since they already visit homes daily, according to Postmaster General David Steiner in an Associated Press interview.

Steiner recalled Lutnick explaining that traditional census workers “are going back three and four times and five and six times to the same house until they can find someone there.” Lutnick questioned, “Who would they rather speak to? Someone that just shows up at their door or their mail carrier who they see every day, they probably trust very much, they probably know.”

However, 21 Democratic state attorneys general challenged the proposal earlier this month in correspondence to the Commerce Department, arguing that the Census Bureau hasn’t demonstrated how postal worker involvement would reduce expenses or improve operational efficiency.

A similar postal worker pilot program was originally scheduled for a 2018 census test in Rhode Island prior to the 2020 count, but officials cancelled it due to conflicting privacy policies between the Census Bureau and Postal Service. While Census Bureau regulations classify household addresses and vacancy status as confidential, postal service guidelines permit sharing such information with law enforcement and other agencies.

The Census Bureau stated Monday that postal workers participating in the 2026 test will comply with all bureau confidentiality standards. They will complete identical training to regular census workers and take a lifetime oath to safeguard respondent privacy, officials said.

The Trump administration implemented several eleventh-hour modifications to the 2026 census test that advocacy groups fear could signal problems for the 2030 count. Changes include eliminating four additional test sites, restricting online responses to English only rather than English, Spanish and Chinese, and substituting questions from the American Community Survey, which includes citizenship inquiries, instead of the traditional shorter census form.