Above are countries like Brazil or Canada, according to a report published this Thursday. Latinos make up 18% of the total US population.
The Latino population in the United States represents a gross domestic product (GDP) of 2.3 trillion dollars, which would make it the eighth largest economy in the world, above countries like Brazil or Canada, according to a report published this Thursday.
The report, published by the Latino Donor Collaborative Organization and academics from California Lutheran University and the University of California at Los Angeles, points out that the growth of the (GDP) of the Hispanic population in the United States has remained stable in recent years.
According to the study, the monetary value of the production of goods and services by Latinos went from 1.7 trillion dollars in 2010 to 2.3 trillion dollars in 2017, the last year for which reports are available.
That figure would be higher than the current 2 trillion dollars in Italy, 1.9 in Brazil, or 1.2 in Mexico, and would be only behind the United States as a whole, with some 20.4 trillion, China, Japan, Germany, India, the United Kingdom, and France.
Sol Trujillo, president and founder of the Latino Donor Collaborative, lamented that for years the importance of the Latino community in the economic growth of the country was ignored and explained the reason for studying the contribution of the Latino community.
“The idea was to create a document that tells what is really happening with Latinos in the United States. They are not people climbing or getting under walls as they say today”, he told Efe in reference to the vision that former President Donald Trump wanted to give to Latinos at that time.
Part of this economic growth is due to the increase in the Latino population, with a rate six times higher than that of the rest of the population in the United States, while their participation in the labor force is increasingly relevant.
Matthew Fineup, the co-author of the report and executive director of the Center for Economic Estimation and Research at California Lutheran University, explained that although Latinos make up 18% of the total population in the United States, they are responsible for 82% of the growth of the forced labor since the financial crisis of 2008.
“It is not about building walls, what the United States needs is workers and for that, we need a reasonable conversation”; said, Trujillo.
According to data provided in the study, by the year 2022 the retirement rate will reach a peak of 345,000 retirees per month, and to sustain this population, the United States will require an average of 700,000 new workers per month. That is where the new generations of Latinos become the fundamental workforce to sustain the country, explained David Hayes-Bautista, co-author of the report and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Culture and Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In addition, a change is taking place in the Latino profile, since 90% of the so-called “post-millennials”; Latinos graduated from high school and 70% are about to enter university, added the academic.
“They are workers young and better educated who have significantly higher incomes than their parents and grandparents. They are the ones who are pushing the economy,” added Trujillo. EFE
Larry D’Arrigo