October 1, 2020
The 2020 U.S. Latino GDP Report released by the Latino Donor Collaborative, reflecting that “during 2018, the nearly 60 million Latinos living in the U.S. generated the world’s eighth largest gross domestic product (GDP),” according to Matthew Fienup, Executive Director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University.
At an estimated $2.6 trillion, the U.S. Latino GDP would be larger than the GDPs of Italy, Brazil, or South Korea, and just slightly behind India’s GDP. The GDP growth rate summarizes the performance of an economy. By that measure, the U.S. Latino GDP has the third-fastest growth rate of the world’s top ten GDPs, and faster than the overall U.S. GDP.
From 2010 to 2018, only China and India had faster GDP growth rates.
“Our report shows that, from 2005 to 2018, Latinos have consistently had a higher labor force participation rate than the rest of the work force in the U.S.,” said co-author David E. Hayes-Bautista, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. “In California, this trend of higher labor force participation can be traced from 1940 to 2018.”
