Behind the US Hispanic boom: 'A tremendously optimistic story'

It is an "incredible moment in time," Matthew Fienup of the Latino GDP Project tells VOZ regarding the Hispanic community's present state. Today, he says, a million Latinos are coming of age: "They're American-born, fully bilingual, fully bicultural, and have grown up seeing the the extraordinary self-less work ethic of their parents."

They are the engine of the U.S.-Hispanic boom.

Fresh census data, analyzed this week by Fienup and his team, reveal new figures from that Latino bonanza: in 2024 Hispanic Americans set new population and labor force records.

Novel brands that add to those already known, previously reported by VOZ: taken as an independent country, Hispanic-Americans would be the fifth largest economy in the world with $4.1 trillion (trillion) of GDP. It surpasses India, Italy, France...

With a growth of 5.5%, it would be the first in growth rate among the main economies of the globe. It surpasses China, which it has been surpassing since 2019. Evidence, says Fienup, of Hispanic resilience: "Since the start of the pandemic, amazingly the U.S. Latino GDP is the single fastest growing GDP among all major economies."

But, of course, far from being a stand-alone economy, they contribute to the entire country. "They're producing growth that results in rising standards of living and greater social mobility." That, he says, benefits all Americans.

The Tennessee mystery

When thinking of Hispanic America, Tennessee is not the first thing that comes to mind. Nor second, nor third. Nor fourth... But the southeastern state is becoming one of the unexpected protagonists of the Latino population boom.

In The Volunteer State, Spanish is the second language, behind English, according to DATA USA. The second highest source of foreign-born residents is Mexico, and the next highest is Guatemala. However, the number of Latinos (+7% of the population) is far behind that of African-Americans (+15%) and even more than that of whites (+71%). Far, too, from the millions of Hispanics living in Texas — whose Hispanic population alone far exceeds the entire population of Tennessee.

Why, then, is it leading the Latino boom?

Fienup raises the problem of comparing Hispanic growth between states when the number of inhabitants varies by the millions. The most extreme cases: California has more than 39 million people, Wyoming less than 600,000.

To compare the Latino footprint between the two, the Latino GDP Project looked at percentage growth. Thus, Tennessee is not the only surprising state to move to the front of the boom: Vermont, Maine and South Dakota share second place. South Carolina rounds out the podium.

"What is it about those places?" the California Lutheran University professor says. "Those are among the fastest growing state economies, these are economies that have seen very rapid economic growth."

Therefore, he concludes, "wherever you see economic growth in the United States, you are going to see a dramatic contribution of Latinos."

However, it is also true that in total numbers, states such as Texas, California and Florida occupy the expected place in the population growth charts. It is also true that the Hispanic population is concentrated in a few states. Three out of four Hispanic Americans live in eight states, according to a report earlier this year by the team: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey and Colorado are home to 48.6 million Latinos.

'A most American group'

What does the Hispanic worker profile look like? Fienup says that to know him it is enough to imagine a "fundamentally American" one: "We we think hard working, self-sufficient, optimistic, patriotic and entrepreneurial, and across every single one of these categories, what we see is these are the characteristics that describe the Latino cohort in the United States."

"So in one sense, you can say this is a most American group," he reflects. "They really just highlight all those things that we think of as fundamentally American."

"They're more likely to start business than non-latinos, the number of highly educated Latinos is growing three times as fast as than that of non-Latinos," he exemplifies. His reports are replete with these figures: between 2010 and 2023, the number of Hispanics who attained a bachelor's degree or higher was 125.3%.

The researcher assures that these "substantial economic premiums" of Hispanics, compared to non-Hispanics, are one of the results that emerge in the more than 30 reports published by the Latino GDP Project. "These economic premiums are a source of vibrancy for the broader economy," he adds.

Watch the full interview

Access the latest Latino GDP Project report