USPS Should Steer Clear of the Census

America's mail carrier has enough on its plate.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) cannot stop losing money. America’s mail carrier lost an astounding $9.5 billion last year and has already lost more than $6 billion this year. These gargantuan losses are hardly an anomaly for the agency. Rather than responding by focusing on its core competency of delivering mail, the USPS continues to take on work and responsibilities wholly unrelated to mail delivery. From enforcing antitrust law to selling money orders, the USPS is now adding another boondoggle to the mix: the census.

According to recent reporting, the U.S. Census Bureau “plans to try using U.S. Postal Service mail carriers to conduct census interviews at two census test sites” in preparation for the 2030 count. The USPS should leave the census to the Census Bureau, which ought to seriously rethink how it counts America’s populace.

The U.S. census is already on a course collision with runaway expenses. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) considers the census a “high-risk program,” citing escalating expenses and cost overruns. In 2020—when the most recent census was conducted—the inflation-adjusted cost of counting a household was more than double the 1990 price tab. The 2020 Census cost taxpayers an astounding $14 billion, and the 2030 Census will likely cost even more absent reform. And it will likely cost even more than it needs to if the USPS runs the show.

Over the past few years, America’s mail carrier has been on a mission to grow its career workforce as much as it can, overlooking less expensive temporary (or “pre-career”) employees. Before leaving office, former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy gloated, “We converted 190,000 employees to full career status over the past 4 years, increasing our total career employees by approximately 28,000 employees.”

Given that USPS pre-career employees cost far less than their career counterparts, these conversions are a significant budget-buster. A 2021 analysis by the GAO estimates that the compensation gap is around $25 per hour, though this total shrinks to $8 per hour when comparing similar types of workers with similar experience. Yet, it will (most likely) be those pricey postal employees going door to door for any census project, instead of the temporary field representatives who ordinarily do the door knocking at a fraction of the cost.

But maybe knocking on doors isn’t needed at all for the U.S. to get an accurate count of its population.

In fact, other countries have begun to realize that an “actual” count can be achieved by bringing together data already collected via various systems such as social safety nets. In more than a dozen European countries (i.e. Switzerland, Norway, Germany), bureaucrats cobble together data already on the books to create elaborate, linked records in master databases.

To see what this would look like in practice, consider how websites such as Ancestry.com help consumers find relatives past and present. Their master database contains wide-ranging records such as birth, marriage, and death certificates, as well as citizenship/naturalization documents. If the government wanted even more information in their “census” database, they could make use of more detailed records at their disposal such as tax records. The National Research Council has suggested that this could work, noting in a 1995 report that a, “high proportion of the U.S. population is included in one or more existing administrative records…the coverage…may well expand in the future.” Thirty years later, surely more information is available.

While this approach may pose constitutional questions, a less-intensive census is still perfectly consistent with Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution. While the text requires an “actual Enumeration,” this likely refers to any deliberate effort to count the population (e.g., compiling records) and the clause grants Congress plenty of discretion as to how to accomplish that. The Census Bureau and Congress should start reforming this “actual Enumeration” by rejecting attempts to insert an overextended and debt-ridden agency into the mix. Only then can they consider real reforms to the centuries-old practice.