Northland's 286 Census collectors are back on the streets today to collect the forms filled out on census day from 73,000 homes and 2800 other dwellings in the region.
For census day - Tuesday - 6.4 million census forms were delivered to 1.8 million homes around the country, and now they have to be collected.
"Census collectors are back on the streets today beginning the pick-up of forms that have not been returned online," Census 2013 General Manager Carol Slappendel said.
"The delivery to, and collection of census forms from, all households in New Zealand takes at least 550,000 working hours. If one person had to do the job on their own working eight hours a day, 365 days a year, it would take them 188 years."
"Luckily Statistics New Zealand has a team of 7000 trained collectors who will do most of this task over a six week period."