The Hispanic or Latino population in the United States once again increased its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), rising from $3.7 trillion to $4.1 trillion, according to a recent report by UCLA and Cal Lutheran.
The latest “U.S. Latino GDP Report” compares advances in the Latino economy between 2022 and 2023, but also makes broader comparisons to understand sustained growth.
The report, prepared by the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA and the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at Cal Lutheran, confirms that:
Latinos represent the world’s fifth-largest economy, if they were an independent country, surpassing the United Kingdom and France, and with faster growth than China’s.
While sectors such as construction, agriculture, and hospitality services are important in the Latino economy, they are not the biggest contributors to its growth. Instead, finance and real estate, along with professional services, drive the increase, explained Dr. David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and one of the report’s authors.
Hayes-Bautista criticized prevailing narratives about Latinos that limit their professional capacity to certain sectors—not because working in those fields is negative, but because it suggests this population is only qualified for specific areas.
“According to those narratives, Latinos are just farmworkers, construction workers, street food vendors, and so on, because those are the Latinos most visible in mass media,” the expert lamented on the podcast ‘El Diario Sin Límites.’ “In reality, the largest sector, producing 17% of Latino GDP, is finance and real estate.”
The expert even mimicked the surprise of those familiar with the report’s findings: “Finance, real estate? Aren’t they all farmworkers?” to which he would simply respond, “No.”
“The second-largest sector is business services, and it’s not what people think,” the expert said.
Finance and real estate accounted for $695 billion in Latino economic activity in the U.S. in 2023, followed by professional and business services ($518 billion), government services ($362 billion), construction ($342 billion), and education and health ($304 billion).
“Excluding the small and highly volatile resource extraction sector, the fastest-growing sectors of the Latino economy since 2019 are retail trade and transportation,” the report noted.
How Do Latinos Spend?
The report also highlights Latino consumer spending, which differs from other populations but reached $2.7 trillion.
“This represents purchasing power 5% greater than the entire economy of Texas ($2.58 trillion) and 25% greater than New York’s ($2.17 trillion),” the report states.
Hayes-Bautista noted that Latinos are “good consumers.”
“Construction is probably the largest and most important part of GDP calculation, but we shop differently. For example, food […], groceries—we go to the store, and Latinos actually spend more money without adjusting for income or education. Simply put, we spend more on food than non-Latinos, but we don’t buy the same things,” he said. “We buy more fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, fresh milk, fresh meat, fresh fish, and more affordable food.”
The expert pointed out that non-Latinos, for example, buy less children’s clothing and more alcohol and tobacco.
Similarities Among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians…
Though not a cultural monolith, the economic behavior of Latinos appears quite similar, Hayes-Bautista said, with analyses by state—where certain Latino groups are the majority—yielding comparable data.
“[There are] various Latino groups: Mexicans, Central Americans, Colombians, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Salvadorans, and so on. Many think they’re so different that they have nothing in common,” the expert explained.
Hayes-Bautista highlighted similarities across states and metropolitan areas.
“In New York, where half of Latinos are Puerto Rican and Dominican; in Miami, where half are Cuban and Colombian; in Chicago, where three-quarters are Mexican or Puerto Rican; or in Phoenix, with 92% Mexicans—we see the same patterns, no matter the location: Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Miami, New Jersey. We see the same trends.”
The expert concluded that the report underscores how the Latino economy grows faster and is more resilient.
Image: Opinion
