Memo: Hispanics Have Made Significant Economic Gains in Recent Years

A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center released this week has a rather dramatic finding – 81% of Hispanics in the US believe their family’s financial situation will improve this year (up from 67% in 2008). 40% say their personal finances are in “excellent” or “good,” up from 23% in 2008. The rising and deep economic optimism found in the Hispanic community today can be explained by recent economic data which suggests the last few years have been particularly good ones for Hispanics in the US. Let’s look:

Unemployment Rate Plummeting – The Hispanic unemployment rate has dropped dramatically from its recession high of 13% to just 5.6% today (a net drop of 7.4 percentage points). This is only slightly above the national average of 4.7%. The Hispanic unemployment rate at the beginning of the first Obama term, January of 2009, was 10.1%. Millions of Hispanics are working today who weren’t a few years ago.

Wages Gains Accelerating – According to a new study by Dr. Rob Shapiro, in the 2013 and 2014, Hispanics saw average household income gains of over 3% in each year. These gains were higher than their African-American and white counterparts, and twice what this community experienced in the early years of the economic recovery. Millions of Hispanics are making more money today than they were a few years ago.

Uninsured Rate Dropping – In the last few years the Hispanic uninsured rate has fallen by more than 25%, from 41.8% to 30.5%. This translates into about 4 million Hispanics having gained coverage since the implementation of the ACA, or 7% of the entire Hispanic population in the US. Millions of Hispanics have health insurance that didn’t a few years ago. Millions more would have insurance if two of the states with the largest Hispanic populations, Florida and Texas, had taken advantage of the Medicaid expansion resources available under the ACA.

A few things to note about this data:

- The real economic gains of Hispanics in the US in recent years, and the rising optimism found in the Pew data, comes at the same time we’ve experienced a rise in anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic rhetoric in the US. -

- The data includes the 8m-9m undocumented immigrants in the US who are Hispanic (total Hispanic population is about 55m today).

In sum, despite the lack of legalization and rising anti-immigrant/Hispanic rhetoric in the US, Hispanic families in the US have made very significant economic gains in recent years. Depending on how one weights the data, it may be the case that Hispanics made more significant economic gains than any other demographic group in the 2nd Obama term.

Faced with a challenging political climate in the US, the Hispanic community has stood strong, worked hard and grown even more optimistic about their future. It is hard to imagine a more powerful repudiation of Donald Trump than the economic success and rising optimism of Hispanics across the US today.