One in five people in the US is Latino: Analysis

Noman Sabit: For the first time in American history, one in five people living in the U.S. identify as Latino, according to a new study by the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and California Lutheran University.

The Tuesday study used data from the 2024 U.S. Census Bureau. Released in June, the data showed an increase of 2 million persons compared to population estimates from 2023.

Altogether, researchers believe that the Latino population in the U.S. is over 68 million. In 1988, David Hayes-Bautista, professor of medicine at UCLA and co-author of the report, said in UCLA’s statement that the Latino population would reach 58.8 million by 2024, “but obviously we were too conservative.” Along with the population growth, census data showed that the Latino labor force saw 5.5 percent growth last year, “the single strongest growth recorded by the researches, and 4.2 percentage points stronger than the non-Latino labor force,” UCLA stated.

“Time and time again, we find that hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism and perseverance are the characteristics that underly the strength and resilience of U.S. Latinos,” Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research & Forecasting at California Lutheran University, said in the statement.

Latino labor consists of 35.1 million workers, which reached this point after a four-year growth between 2010 and 2024. This growth was 7.2 times faster than among non-Latino laborers.

This information stems from the 2025 U.S. Latino GDP Report released in April. The report showed that the U.S. Latino GDP reached $4.1 trillion, elevating it to the world’s fifth-largest GDP and larger than India’s economy, UCLA stated.

“The nation’s Latino GDP is also the single fastest-growing among major economies, growing faster than China’s GDP since 2019,” the university added.

BP/CS