Tejada says the government will hire about 800,000 enumerators nationwide, and Clinkenbeard estimates Cambridge will require at least 400.

Offices will rely primarily on those not in the regular workforce--including the elderly, part-time employees and college students--to serve as enumerators.

"Given an unemployment rate of under two percent in Cambridge, we are going to be relying heavily on part-time workers," Clinkenbeard says.

He says he hopes to attract at least several dozen Harvard students to work on campus and in Cambridge. Enumerators earn $15 per hour.

Enumerators are, however, a last resort. Clinkenbeard says a response returned by mail costs taxpayers about $3, but the cost of a response obtained by enumerators going door to door jumps to about $27.

Completing the Count

Like all communities across America, Cambridge is eager to maximize its census returns to garner as much government funding as possible and provide accurate demographic data.

But Cambridge differs in two fundamental respects from most other cities of its size. Cambridge is home to a number of immigrant communities, making the city very linguistically diverse, and much of Cambridge's population is composed of transient college students.