Latinas’ contribution to the U.S. economy grew more than 50% between 2010 and 2021. In 2021, it totaled $1.3 trillion, according to new data from California Lutheran University and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Much of that growth was generated by the daughters of Latino immigrants who are now in the labor force and have higher education levels and better English-language skills than their parents.
Though they’re just 9% of the population, Latinas accounted for 30% of the growth in the U.S. labor force from 2010 to 2021. And their real income was up 46% in that time.
“It is growth that we have been witnessing firsthand and tracking and following for years now,” said Jen Auerbach-Rodriguez, an executive with Merrill Wealth Management, a subsidiary of Bank of America, which funded the research. She said it’s important that financial institutions recognize this growth.
“One in three of every new checking account that we open in the consumer network is opened by a member of the Hispanic Latino community,” she said.
But it’s important to note why Latinas are making economic gains, including their contribution to gross domestic product.
“It can go up either because Latinos are doing better in the economy, or it can go up because there’s more Latinos in the economy,” said Fernando Lozano, a professor of economics at Pomona College in California.
Lorna Rivera, director of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, said a lot of that economic growth is really about the number of Latinas entering the workforce.
It’s happening at a time when “that prime working-age group for non-Latinos is declining because they’re getting older,” she said.
Those younger Latina workers play a vital role — and will for decades to come “because they’re also a very young population,” she said.
Despite their economic rise, Rivera said, Latina workers are still overrepresented in certain low-wage jobs.
“In office and administrative support or food preparation, personal care, building and grounds cleaning,” she said.
Latinas earn an average of 57 cents for every dollar a non-Hispanic white man earns, according to UCLA.
Joaquín Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said he’s concerned about the transfer of Latina wealth.
“I’m not even talking for immigrants. I’m talking about, like, second-, third-generation. Are we going to see that they are able to still continue the upward mobility?” he said.
It’s unclear, he said, how much future generations will be able to build on the gains made by today’s Latinas.
