Latinos’ economic contributions in the U.S. make up an essential part of the country’s future, according to a new report.
The Latino Donor Collaborative (LDC), a non-partisan national organization focused on “advancing a more accurate portrayal of Latinos,” released a study that measured the community’s economic power by calculating the strength of its workforce and the Latino Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as of 2015. The report, titled “Latino Gross Domestic Product Report: Quantifying the Impact of American Hispanic Economic Growth,” was published on June 28.
The study was commissioned by the LDC and conducted by Werner Schink, co-founder and CEO of Latino Futures Research, and David E. Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine at UCLA.
“The common perception of Latinos being a burden to U.S. society is utterly wrong,” Schink and Hayes-Bautista wrote in the report. “To the contrary, Latinos are the element most needed to fuel the growth of this country. All Americans have benefitted from the $2.13 trillion contribution the Latino GDP makes to the country, and should take steps to make sure it continues.”
According to the study, the Latino community’s more than $2.13 trillion GDP surpasses the GDP of India, Italy, Brazil and Canada. That means if the more than 56 million Latinos living in the U.S. were an autonomous country, they’d have the seventh largest GDP in the world.
If the population were its own U.S. state, it’d have the second-largest GDP in the country after California.
The LDC’s Latino GDP figure is far higher than what the University of Georgia’s Selig Center for Economic Growth calculated in 2015. The Multicultural Economy Report stated that the U.S. Hispanic market’s buying power stood at $1.3 trillion and would reach $1.7 trillion by 2020.
“Latinos are America’s new mainstream audience and it is our hope that this study will lead business and political leaders to take us seriously and invest in our continued growth.””
The LDC says its findings are further proof of the importance of Latinos in the U.S.
“We are excited to have statistical evidence that proves what Latinos living in the U.S. have always known to be true: we are a hard-working, productive, and essential part of American economic growth and American society,” Ana Valdez, Executive Director of the LDC, said in a press statement. “Latinos are America’s new mainstream audience and it is our hope that this study will lead business and political leaders to take us seriously and invest in our continued growth.”
If Latinos’ GDP continues to grow at the same compound annual rate (2.9 percen), the study estimates that nearly a quarter of the U.S. economy will be powered by Latinos by 2020.
The study also collected data that shows the formidable growth of the Latino workforce (“For every two young Latinos entering the civilian work force, roughly only one young non-Latino entered,” the report says), college graduation rates among Latinos and the number of Latinos serving in the front-lines.
Read the full report here.
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