The Shrinking American Middle Class: Even More Challenging for Latinos
By Steve Moya, NewsTaco
Many economists define middle-class as those adults whose annual household income is between $40, 000 and $120,000 or between two-thirds and twice the national median income. According to the Pew Research Center the middle class is significantly smaller than it was in 1971 when it accounted for 61% of adults, compared with 14% for the upper-class and 25% for the lower class. Forty years later the middle class share has declined by 10 percentage points to 51% while the upper class has risen six points and the lower class by four.
In a New York Times column William A. Gaston points out that while the middle-class is less socially and economically dominant than it once was, more Americans are enjoying affluent lives and by some measures the middle-class has done better and by others worse than the Pew study suggests.
So let’s consider Latinos. While the size of most households has shrunk in the last 40 years from 3.2 people to 2.5, that measure doesn’t reflect the Latino reality of larger households requiring dollars to stretch further. Additionally hours of work have increased overall by 10% between 1979 and 2007 and though a breakout for Latinos isn’t available that number would be much higher given lower Latino educational levels and white-collar employment. The bottom line in this analysis for Latinos is income. Today Latino households earn only $39,000 annually, Whites $57,000, Asians, $68,000 and African-Americans $33,000.
More Latinos at the top of the economic ladder would be a good thing. Moving more Latinos to the middle is probably the first goal and much of the focus of Great Potential: Latinos in a Changing America.
This article was first published in Great Potential: Latinos in a Changing America.
Steve Moya has a combination of entrepreneurial, consultancy and corporate experience in marketing, communications, strategy development, and public/governmental affairs with companies and entities that include Univision, the Los Angeles City Council, Moya, Villanueva and Associates and Manning, Selvage and Lee. Prior to moving into consulting he was Senior-Vice President and Chief Marketing officer for Humana, Inc. a Fortune 100 health benefits company where he was responsible for marketing, corporate communications and actively involved in corporate strategy development.
The challenge for Latinos is how to enhance their education levels and skills in order to be relevant in the information economy and meet the needs of the modern workplace at a time when federal, state, and local budgets are strained, if not declining. This book explains why an aging America needs Latinos. While it looks in-depth at the economic forces we’re facing, it focuses on strategies Latino families and communities throughout the nation can adopt to build a better future for themselves and the nation.
Interested? Click HERE to purchase Great Potential: Latinos in a Changing America.
