The “jobless recovery” may have turned around, but gains for Latinos have not been widespread. Immigrant Latinos, especially the most recent arrivals, have captured the most jobs.
Getting the news could be the single most extensive cross-cultural experience for the Hispanic population in America, according to a report issued today the Pew Hispanic Center. A growing number of Hispanics switch between English and Spanish to get the news. Rather than two audiences sharply segmented by language, the survey shows that many more Latinos get at least some of their news in both English and Spanish than in just one language or the other.
Latinos experienced substantial gains in the U.S. labor market in 2003. The number of Hispanics added to the employment rolls was twice as high as in 2002, and unemployment eased downward. For the first time since January 2000, Latinos experienced increases in employment that consistently outpaced their population growth in the United States.
In light of President George W. Bush's January 7, 2004 announcement of a new immigration initiative, the Pew Hispanic Center provided information about attitudes towards immigrant and immigration policy, and estimates of the size of the undocumented population in the United States. Sources for the data are the National Survey of Latinos, conducted in 2002 jointly by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Center's March 2002 report entitled “How Many Undocumented: The Numbers Behind the U.S.-Mexico Migration Talk.”