{"id":59945,"date":"2023-09-15T11:48:53","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T18:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=59945"},"modified":"2023-09-15T11:48:53","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T18:48:53","slug":"us-latino-economic-output-propels-the-country-forward-new-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=59945","title":{"rendered":"US Latino Economic Output Propels the Country Forward: New Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Pilar Marrero<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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If U.S. Latinos were an independent country, they would be the fifth largest economy in the world, according to findings from the latest US Latino GDP Report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

One of the many misconceptions about the U.S. Latino community is that it is a drag on the country\u2019s economy. But if U.S. Latinos were an independent country, they would be the fifth largest economy in the world, larger than India, the United Kingdom, and France.<\/p>\n

Moreover, their economic growth in recent years is outranked only by China.<\/p>\n

According to the latest\u00a0U.S. Latino GDP Report<\/a>, the total economic output of Latinos in the United States in 2021 totaled $3.2 trillion, representing the total amount of goods produced and services provided by Latinos of any background and immigration status in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the normal narrative of Latinos,\u201d said Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health & Culture at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, which helped produce the report. \u201cThe normal narrative of Latinos is they come to live off welfare, steal jobs, and all that. That\u2019s not the case. Latinos are the point of growth. This is where you want to invest if you want to see more GDP growth in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Latinos are the \u2018point of growth\u2019 for the US economy<\/h2>\n

This is the sixth year in a row that there has been a comprehensive paper looking at all the publicly available data from major U.S. agencies calculating U.S. Latino GDP. But it is a work of many years and the brainchild of Hayes-Bautista, who developed the original algorithm along with Werner Schink, former Chief Economist with the California EDD.<\/p>\n

The latest report, co-produced by the Center for Economic Research & Forecasting (CERF) at California Lutheran University and economists Matthew Fienup and Dan Hamilton, shatters existing myths about Latino\u2019s economic contributions in the United States.<\/p>\n

One example: the GDP of Latinos in the U.S. grew at a faster pace than the national GDP from 2010 to 2021. The report also notes the Latino labor force was \u201can important source of resilience for the broader economy in 2021, despite a second year of COVID-19 pandemic conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health & Culture at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In an interview with Ethnic Media Services, Hayes-Bautista argued that Latinos are the point of growth for the United States economy, both in terms of spending and labor. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for Latinos, the U.S. economy would be significantly smaller than it is today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The researcher and his partners are now working on a second report that focuses specifically on the economic output of Latinas who \u2013 while \u201clargely immigrant\u201d and with lower rates of education \u2013 are a major component of this emerging trend.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Hayes-Bautista believes we are just at the beginning of this growing market.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir children are entering the labor force, and there are three children for every Latino 60-year-olds, 90% of who graduate from high school, and two-thirds go to college. They are fluent, bi-lingual and citizens, so they are entering the labor force with much greater human capital than their largely immigrant parents did,\u201d said Hayes-Bautista. \u201cImagine what they are capable of if we invest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keeping the economy afloat during Covid<\/h2>\n

Latino GDP growth was 7.1%, a full two percentage points larger than growth among non-Latinos. Latinos also represent a formidable consumer market, larger than the entire economies of countries including Italy, Canada and Russia, which boast the world\u2019s eighth, ninth, and tenth largest GDPs, respectively, and larger than the entire economy of states like Texas or New York.<\/p>\n

Latino real consumption grew three times faster than that among non-Latinos.<\/p>\n

Why is all of this happening? And why now?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Latinos consistently have had a much higher rate of labor force participation than non-Latinos,\u201d said Hayes Bautista. \u201cAnd when we look at the COVID years, 2020 and 2021, as it turns out, Latinos tend to work in jobs that they are less likely to be able to do by sheltering at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A lot of the focus \u2013 and rightly so during those years and since \u2013 has been on the price paid by essential workers, many of them Latinos, for having to show up to work in the factories, the farms, the packing houses, and the stores, even as much of the workforce remained under Covid lockdown. However, according to Hayes-Bautista, Latinos not only kept everyone else fed and housed, but they kept the country afloat economically.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you remember the first couple of months of the COVID shutdown in 2020 when people were fighting in the stores over rolls of toilet paper? If it weren\u2019t for Latino farm workers going to work every day, they would have been fighting over the last sack of potatoes in the store. That would have been very serious,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Latinos paid the price, with higher Covid mortality and infection rates, he adds, but kept this country going.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s bravery, that\u2019s resiliency, that\u2019s courage,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Removing barriers to greater economic participation<\/h2>\n

In 2021, Latinos were six percentage points more likely to be actively working or seeking work than their non-Latino counterparts.<\/p>\n

Latinos have also improved their overall economic output through rising educational achievements. The report finds that the number of people earning a bachelor\u2019s degree grew three times faster for Latinos than non-Latinos.<\/p>\n

Still, says Hayes-Bautista, the U.S. needs to invest more in education. He compared the experience of his son, who graduated from university ten years ago with substantial debt, to his own experience coming out of college debt free.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaby boomers like me got a free education. So why do we charge today for education that we got for free? This is one of the many issues, probably the major, affecting young people\u2019s ability to buy houses.\u201d<\/p>\n

And even as homeownership rates among Latinos climbs, \u201cwe are not making it easy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

For Hayes-Bautista, the message coming out of the data is clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cLatinos are the future of the U.S. economy, and we are the last chance for this country to maintain economic preeminence throughout the 21st century.\u201d He continued, \u201cImagine if we took away the barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the\u00a0full press conference<\/a>\u00a0along with presentations of the report\u2019s findings.<\/em><\/p>\n

Image via\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByPilar Marrero Sep 14, 2023 If...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59946,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59945\/revisions\/59946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}