Businessman Juan Manuel Santoyo, owner of Tamales Liliana in East Los Angeles, is not surprised that the 65 million Latinos living in the United States alone represent the fifth largest economy in the world, even ahead of China and India.
“It doesn’t surprise me, because Latinos are in all areas and all regions, not just in the United States,” he said. “If we were united, we would be a world power.”
According to the latest US Latino GDP report, published by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and California Lutheran University, Latino workers helped prop up the US economy during the most difficult days of the Covid pandemic. -19 and then led the country’s economic recovery
Their total economic output, or Gross Domestic Product (GDP), reached $3.7 trillion in 2022. That figure surpasses the historical mark of $3.2 trillion set in 2021.
The most recent figure reported by researchers would make Latin GDP the fifth largest GDP in the world by 2022, larger than India, the United Kingdom and France.
Since its inaugural publication in 2017, the report, which is currently produced annually by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture and the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University, has provided insight detailed account of the vast and rapidly growing economic contributions of Latinos living in the United States.
Upward trend
Dr. David Hayes-Bautista of UCLA, co-founder of the US Latino GDP Project and the report series, began tracking data on Latino GDP since 2004.
New findings show a continued upward trend in the economic performance of Latinos in the US, with their GDP rising from $1.6 trillion in 2010 to $2.8 trillion in 2019 before surpassing $3 trillion for the first time. in 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“When Covid-19 hit, many analysts predicted that previous Latino economic gains would be erased,” said David Hayes-Bautista, a professor of medicine at UCLA and co-author of the report. “But the Latino GDP of the United States has continued to increase.”
Researchers found that during the pandemic years from 2019 to 2022, the average annual growth of real US Latino GDP was 4.8%, compared to just 1.5% for the US economy overall.
During that same period, Latinos were responsible for 41.4% of the country’s real GDP growth, despite representing only 19.2% of the US population.
In fact, the performance of Latino workers during the pandemic was enough to make their Gross Domestic Product the fastest growing among the world’s top 10 economies between 2019 and 2022, surpassing the GDP growth of economic powers such as China, India and the United States as a whole, which came in a distant fourth place.
“Examining the impacts of Covid-19 on the US economy through the lens of Latino GDP is very revealing,” said Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at Cal Lutheran and co-author of the report.
“We believe the economic data published in this year’s report illustrates how vital the strength and resilience of Latinos are to the country’s economy.”
Vilma Serna, a public health analyst, expressed that she was not surprised by the contribution of Latino workers to the United States economy.
“We Latinos are and work hard in all parts of the world, and those who speak ill of immigrants are out of ignorance,” Serna declared. “They are used as scapegoats for everything and the sad thing about that is that, like the fire, it spreads faster.”
Growth in more than a decade
The report titled “US Latino GDP Soars to a Record $3.7 Trillion, and Its Growth Rate Outpaces China and India,” over an even longer period of time, from 2010 to 2022, Latinos have shown that They are an important driver of economic growth in the United States
During that period, Latin GDP was the third fastest growing among the 10 largest GDPs in the world.
Furthermore, in that same period, average annual real GDP growth for Latinos was 4.2 percent, compared to just 1.7 percent for the overall U.S. economy.
The advantage of a healthy lifestyle
Even as American Latinos continued their economic output during the pandemic, Covid-19 hit them particularly hard.
Between 2020 and 2021, coronavirus became the number one cause of death among Latinos, but the third most common cause among non-Latinos.
However, the Latino GDP report shows that by 2022, the rate of Covid-19 related deaths among Latinos had decreased by more than 50% from its peak.
And while the 2022 rate was still slightly higher than that of non-Hispanic whites, Latino death rates from other causes, including heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries and chronic respiratory diseases, remained significantly lower. , rebounding a phenomenon known as “the Latino healthy lifestyle advantage.”
“We have everything to be better every day,” said Azucena Rosales, a dispatcher at a shave ice shop in East Los Angeles. “We are excellent workers, because that is how our parents taught us… We just need more unity.”
Hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism
The reaffirmation of the health of Latinos is reflected in their life expectancy.
The report notes that in 2019, Latinos were expected to live three years longer on average than non-Hispanic whites, but that advantage dropped to just six months at the height of the pandemic. By 2022, it had recovered to two and a half years.
“Just last spring, a study announced the disappearance of Latinos’ healthy lifestyle advantage,” Hayes-Bautista said. “But our latest report marks the return of Latinos’ healthy lifestyle advantage as one of the factors driving tremendous GDP growth.
“Hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism, perseverance: these are the characteristics that underlie the strength and resilience of American Latinos,” added Matthew Fienup. “We believe these same characteristics will continue to drive growth in the overall U.S. economy for years to come.”
Key takeaways from the report:
The US Latino GDP reached $3.7 trillion in 2022, the highest mark since the figure was first tracked, and the fifth largest GDP in the world.
- During the Covid-19 years, from 2019 to 2022, the US Latino GDP grew faster than the GDP of any of the world’s top 10 economies, including China and India.
- Compared to the GDP of the world’s largest economies, Latin GDP has been the third fastest growing overall since 2010.
- While Latinos faced high mortality rates from Covid-19, their “healthy lifestyle advantage,” which included longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic whites, has recovered.
Telling the Latino Narrative
For Dr. David Hayes Bautista, co-author of the report, it is “impressive” what has happened to Latinos in the United States in economic matters.
This means that we not only know how to work, but we can also create wealth for this country, right?
“Yes, we have been doing it for more than 500 years, but that is another story, here, since 2010, we have been the point of growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the United States. And we are, in fact, their secret weapon to maintain global primacy in the economy, because we are the only economy, besides India, with growth in the workforce, and that thanks to the growth of the Latin population.”
However, this economic growth and population growth is not recognized by the senior political leaders in this country, particularly the Republicans, since Ronald Reagan’s amnesty, and also the Democrats, because when they had the opportunity to grant a comprehensive immigration reform for Latinos, they did not do it.
“Democrats try, although it seems that no one understands what we contribute to the country. On the one hand, for Republicans we are a danger, a threat. And for Democrats we are a group that needs to be fixed, that is functional, but that cannot and does not assimilate.”
_ So, Latinos are the bargaining chip for both parties?
“Yes, for everyone, for everyone. In fact, you asked a question about Ronald Reagan and the interesting thing is that, from then on, I have said that, in fact, Latinos have to be Republicans by our nature, by our character. We work hard, we have families, we lead a healthy life, with a good health profile.
But the Republicans from the Reagan era onwards rejected us with very racist actions. On the other hand, Democrats recognize that we are not a dysfunctional group that needs to be repaired and they never give us attention, they assume that all minorities are equal and that is not the case. So no one takes us into account.”
And what should Latinos do to be able to respond to this indifference regarding immigration reform that both parties have not wanted to give in more than 40 years? How should they respond?
“We have to write our own narrative, because therein lies the dilemma. We, like 65,000,000 Latinos, do not tell our own narrative of who we are in this country. We don’t have it. So they are the ones who put their narratives, as they suspect us to be. But we don’t have our own narrative and we have to create it ourselves.”
“No one helps us, no one understands us and sometimes not even ourselves. I see it in my students, at UCLA, who internalize what they have heard about Latinos and come to believe everything, that we are dysfunctional, gang members, etc….
In classes, I only give them scientific data about the reality of Latinos and they change their minds, and suddenly they feel guilty for having been carried away by foreign narratives.”
