Hispanic Jobs

This week at LatPro, we were thrilled to be approached by Sue Kirchhoff, a writer from USA Today. Sue was working on an article related to Hispanics and the economy, and came to us as an authority on Hispanic Americans in professional career fields. We were glad to serve as her go-to source for the professional Hispanic perspective.

While performing research for her article Slow economy hits Hispanics hard, Sue found that the current U.S. economic downturn has had a greater impact on Hispanics than the overall U.S. population. She came to LatPro to see if that trend held true for professional, college-educated Hispanics.

As I told Sue, LatPro hasn’t seen a drop in the number of companies that want to recruit Hispanic professionals or a spike in new candidates that could indicate an increase in unemployment for this demographic.

Why this discrepancy? Why does the LatPro demographic (college educated, bilingual Latinos) seem to be experiencing lower unemployment that the general Hispanic population?

I think a likely explanation is that general unemployment figures for Hispanics include all Hispanics. Just like any other group, Hispanics are employed in a wide range of positions, from service industries and manufacturing all the way up to executive positions. But there are also a large number of Hispanics in fields that are affected by the mortgage meltdown and housing crisis, such as construction and other trades related to homebuilding. These types of positions are especially vulnerable to job cuts.

It’s a different story when you look specifically at Latinos who have obtained a college degree. These professional-level Hispanics have a variety of skills that are valued by employers, even in this slow employment market. They are a triple threat – bringing not only education and training within their field, but also cultural insight and language skills to the table. Bilingual employees give employers more bang for their buck.

I also see this reflected in our diversity job fairs geared toward Hispanic and bilingual professionals. Despite the economy, companies are still investing in recruiting events like the NSHP-LatPro diversity job fairs, and we still have to advertise the job fair to professional Hispanic candidates (they aren’t just showing up because of an unemployment spike).

To read Sue’s full article, please click here.

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