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Latinos now make up one out of every five people in the United States, according to a new analysis from UCLA’s Latino GDP Project and California Lutheran University, a media brief about the study noted Tuesday.
That milestone marks the highest share in American history, according to the media brief.
Using 2024 U.S. Census Bureau figures, researchers found the country’s Latino population has grown by 2 million since 2023, reaching more than 68 million people nationwide.
“In 1988, lacking the sophisticated data we now have, we projected that Latinos might grow to 58.8 million by now,” report co-author David Hayes-Bautista, distinguished professor of medicine at UCLA, said, “but obviously we were too conservative.”
The media brief also shared graphics about how U.S. Latinos continue to outpace non-Latinos in population growth.
In 2024, the growth premium for the Latino population was +2.5, indicating that the Latino population growth rate was 2.5 percentage points higher than that of non-Latinos.
The brief also reported that Latino participation in the labor force reached a record 69 percent in 2024. The Latino workforce grew 5.5 percent to 35.1 million workers, expanding more than seven times faster than the non-Latino labor force since 2010.
The following chart presents the labor force’s annual growth since 2011.
This resulted in a 4.5-point Latino labor force growth premium for 2024.
“Time and time again, we find that hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism, and perseverance are the characteristics that underly the strength and resilience of U.S. Latinos,” Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at Cal Lutheran, said.
The complete media brief is here.
You can download the entire analysis here and also visit the Latino GDP site.
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What We’re Reading
My Story in USA TODAY: For the October 2 edition of The Latino Newsletter, I cited the story I filed for USA TODAY’s Hispanic Heritage Month magazine. The online version of my reported piece for the magazine was published earlier today.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the founder of The Latino Newsletter. He is also its current part-time publisher and executive director.
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