Immigration Law

Hispanic Job Losses Outpacing Broader Market

By Robert Kraft

The Dallas Morning News reports the results of a recent survey showing that Latino immigrants to the United States lost jobs at a faster pace than the broader workforce last year after a sharp contraction in the construction industry where many immigrants work. Here are excerpts from the article:

The survey by the Pew Hispanic Center, based on U.S. census figures, showed unemployment among foreign-born Hispanics reached 8 percent in the last quarter of 2008, up from 5.1 percent a year earlier.

The losses outstripped those in the broader labor market, where unemployment rose to 6.6 percent in the period, up from 4.6 percent a year earlier, the study found.

About 10.8 million foreign-born Hispanics worked in the U.S. at the close of last year, according to government figures, which do not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

The labor participation rate of foreign-born Hispanics has contracted about 1 percentage point, to 70.4 percent in the fourth quarter, the Pew study said. But Rakesh Kochhar, the study's author, refrained from concluding that either foreign-born Latinos were returning to Latin America or fewer Latin Americans were coming into the U.S.

Mexico's top diplomat in North Texas, Enrique Hubbard, recently said he believes that the number of foreign-born Mexicans in the region has remained the same. Some have returned to Mexico, but others have moved here from other states whose economies are more battered than that of Texas, Mr. Hubbard said.

Full post as published by Immigration Law Answers Blog on February 15, 2009 (boomark / email).