News 12 This Morning, January 9, 2008

Aiken County-- Louis Mozone has been unemployed since November and he's hunting for a new job.

"It's rough. I have five kids and a wife to take care of, so it's kind of crucial for me," Louis Mozone said.

Louis says he's going to apply for a job with the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 2010 U.S. census could bring as many as 350 jobs to Aiken County and 1,000 jobs statewide.

Here's how it works, you take a test, and depending on your results, they will schedule interviews to select the best people to do the census. There's three levels of employees, supervisors, crew leaders, and numerators, who actually go out and take the census. They'll find out how many people are in a household, their age, gender, and occupation.

"It's quite a bit of information you have to get from folks, and that's why they need so many people because they physically have to go every place," Aiken Workforce Center, Mike Solenberger said.

The job will pay $10-14 dollars an hour. Solenberger says it's also a good part time job because all the work is going to be done in the evenings when people are home.

"Right now it's much needed. It's much needed for the people. And I'm quite sure it won't help everybody, but it'll help as many people as possible. It will be a great help," Shaster Mobley said.

Testing started about two months ago, and hundreds of people have already taken the test. Louis says these new jobs couldn't come at a better time.

"That's right on time I think. 350 jobs. That will give a lot of people some jobs so maybe some things will open up here soon," Mozone said.

Louis says any job will help, especially in an economy like this one.

The testing for these jobs will be on Monday at 2:00. There are two testing locations in Aiken County, the Aiken Workforce Center on Richland Avenue, and the Aiken Library on York Street. They can only test 17 people at a time, so you'll want to get here early. And make sure to bring two forms of ID.