Latinos Hit Hard in Economic Downturn

The slumping economy has hit the Latino community disproportionately harder with unemployment nearly two percent higher than non-Hispanics according to research conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Due mainly to a slump in the construction industry, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the U.S. rose to 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008, well above the 4.7% rate for all non-Hispanics. As recently as the end of 2006, the gap between those two rates had shrunk to an historic low of 0.5 percentage points--4.9% for Latinos compared with 4.4% for non-Latinos, on a seasonally adjusted basis.1

The spike in Hispanic unemployment has hit immigrants especially hard. Their unemployment rate was 7.5% in the first quarter of this year,2 marking the first time since 2003 that a higher percentage of foreign-born Latinos was unemployed than native-born Latinos. Some 52.5% of working age Latinos (ages 16 and older) are immigrants. Latinos make up 14.2% of the U.S. labor force.

The downturn in the housing market is a major contributor to the unemployment of Latinos. The Washington Post reported on these findings:

Latino workers have lost nearly 250,000 jobs in the construction industry over the past year, with the foreign-born hit hardest, the report by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center said.