The State of Latino Workers in the US

I love bullet points. They get to the issues quickly and easily – which is exactly what we need while gulping our no-fat soy, double-veggie shot whatevers.

I put these together from a report called “Latino Workers in the United States 2011,” released by the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), as reported in diversityjobs.com.

• The unemployment rate among Latinos last month was 11.3 percent, compared with 7.9 percent for white non-Latino workers.
• The Latino unemployment rate reached 13.2% in January of 2011, an increase of 7.4 percentage points from December 2007.
• Latino median weekly earnings at $532 in the most recent quarter available in 2010 represented 68.8% of what whites ($774) earned.
• In 2009, more than one in four (25.4%) Latino families lived below the poverty line.
• 40% of Latino workers earn poverty level wages, about twice the share of white workers who earned low wages (at 21.4%).

We frequently talk about Latinos and poverty as they relate to the economy, politics, education, and many other things. It’s good to have a statistical definition at the ready for those frequent times – it helps the conversation if you can paint a picture.

LCLAA has some suggestions as to how to counter the policies they feel are at the root of the problem that cause the conditions that are represented in the data. You can read the rest of the report HERE.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda