Census Bureau officials opened a second office in Baltimore on Tuesday and expect to hire about 1,200 temporary employees to canvass the city and collect demographic data.

The office, at 205 S. President St., will serve as headquarters for operations on the eastern side of the city. Fernando E. Armstrong, regional director for the Census Bureau, said the federal government has started accepting applications for the jobs and will hire people at the end of March for stints ranging from five weeks to three months, depending on the nature of the work.

Armstrong said the Census Bureau wants to employ people who can work in the communities where they live. "The people who are going to be visiting the homes are people who know the neighborhoods, who care about those neighborhoods," Armstrong said. "It's important that the people we hire are from those communities and that they are doing something good that will last for the next 10 years. And these are federal jobs."

A 10-question census form is expected to go out to residents in mid-March. The temporary workers will primarily deal with those who do not respond to the questionnaires.

Census figures are used to help allocate $400 billion a year in federal dollars and determine the number of seats each state gets in Congress.

The other Baltimore census office, in the 100 block of Gay St., serves the rest of the city and has been open since fall 2008.