APRIL 10, 2020 — The U.S. Census Bureau, following guidance from federal, state, and local health officials, has implemented social distancing measures and staffing adjustments to help protect the health and safety of 2020 Census call center employees. As a result, callers may be experiencing increased call wait times.
To increase call center capacity, the Census Bureau is reinstating the callback option and making more employees available to respond to requests. The callback option enables callers to leave a message and receive a timely call back from a census taker to process their 2020 Census response when all call center agents are busy assisting others. The Census Bureau had temporarily turned off the callback option due to staffing adjustments.
The callback option is now available in seven languages (English, Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese). The callback option will be available in the remaining seven languages (Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Tagalog) by Tuesday, April 14, 2020.
The Census Bureau has live customer service representatives supporting direct phone lines to 14 languages. Every census response is important and we appreciate callers’ patience as we seek to respond to all incoming requests.
Households can also respond online at any time at 2020census.gov in the following languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. The Census Bureau offers webpages and 2020 Census guides in 59 languages, including American Sign Language, in addition to guides in Braille and large print. Visit the Language Support page for more information.