Latinos: Only Group Whose Employment Numbers Have Returned to Pre-Recession Levels

The LA Times is reporting that Latinos recovering more quickly from the recession than other demographic groups.

By Jorge Rivas Feb 06, 2012

The good news is Latinos are recovering more quickly from the recession than any other demographic group, according to an analysis published the LA Times Sunday.

The bad news is the jobs are often come with low wages, may be temporary and Latinos may have to travel longer distances to get to work.

The Los Angeles Times Don Lee with more specifics:

So far, Latinos are the only demographic group whose employment numbers have returned to pre-recession levels. The latest Latino jobless rate of 10.5% remains higher than the overall rate of 8.3% for the nation and 7.% for whites, partly reflecting their large immigrant population (foreign-born U.S. workers tend to have higher unemployment because of a variety of factors) as well as education and skill levels.

The construction industry remains weak, but other sectors in which Latinos have a relatively large share of jobs — hotels, food services, healthcare and manufacturing, for example — are seeing more robust job growth.

Mining support services, where Latinos make up about a fifth of the workers, are expanding employment significantly. And, because Latinos account for a relatively small share of workers in the public sector, they aren’t bearing the brunt of deep cuts in government jobs.

(More than one in five black workers are employed in public administration, as are 23.3 percent of black women in the workforce.) As the economy worsened, the jobless rate for Latinos hit a peak in November 2010 at 13.1% nationally and 14.7% in California. Since then, those rates have fallen to 10.5% and 13.8%, according to the LA Times.