** FOR STORY SLUGGED NUEVA ORLEANS HISPANOS ** Latino workers congregate on a corner on Veterans Highway in Metarie, La., Monday, April 28, 2008. The workers are waiting for an opportunity to perform labor for those needing help renovating homes that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. From third from left: Santiago Cabrera, 37, of Honduras, German Lopez, 39, of Honduras, Gustavo Cuzaves, 34 of Honduras and Oscar Navarete, 35. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)ASSOCIATED PRESS
That the Great Recession and its aftermath treated groups differently should be of no surprise. The data has been there for years. There was an estimated "lifetime present-value income loss of about $70,000 for every American," according to a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study. But that was an average. As I wrote back in August 2018:
Those in in the top 10% saw median wealth jump by 26.6% since 2007. Everyone else was at best almost back to where they were (80th to 89.9th percentiles) or significantly worse off (all others).
There's a new analysis of government data by the Pew Research Center that looks at Latino incomes, both before the Great Recession and ten years after. The results are odd and troubling.
The first point made by Rakesh Kochhar at Pew was that, overall, people seem to have begun a recovery from that unmitigated disaster. In 2017, median personal income of American workers was 3% higher than in 2007. Still nothing to write home about, as according to the inflation calculator at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the buying power of $1 in 2007 was the same as $1.20 in 2017. Assuming for a moment that the income increase was real and not nominal—that is, adjusted for inflation—people in the middle of the pack had gained a real 3% in salary over 10 years. Not impressive, particularly when important areas such as healthcare, higher education, and housing race much faster than inflation. Still, it was certainly better than no progress.
But, again, a single number is an average of everyone, not something you can necessarily apply to any one person. Here's the conundrum from Pew. Median Latino personal income rose, on average, 5% in that 2007 to 2017 range. Within the group, the numbers varied wildly. Latinos born in other countries saw a 14% gain. Those born in the U.S. lost 6%.
If it hadn't been for immigration, Latinos as a class would have slid far behind many others. According to Pew, a drop in Latino immigration increased the percentage of those who had been in the country at least 10 years and, because immigrants who have been in the U.S. longer tend to make more, the median rose. Had immigration continued apace, the effect would have been diluted. And then there was this:
U.S.-born Latino workers – younger and less educated than U.S.-born workers overall – experienced greater losses in the recession and are left wanting in the economic recovery, despite recent gains.
U.S.-born Latinos are 52% of the Latino workforce, according to Pew. They represent half of the entire growth in the country's labor force since 2008. We have many more people working in a subgroup that had a $32,000 personal income in 2007 and one in 2017 that was only $30,000.
These Latinos did see overall increases from 2013 to 2017 that kept pace with the country overall. The problem was that they lost significantly more than the average during the downturn.
Kochhar seemed to attribute some of the problems of the U.S.-born Latinos to being younger and less educated than the average U.S.-born worker. But it's not clear that's the biggest reason, since they lost so much more in the recession than the average. The issue wasn't one of how much their incomes advanced after.
This seems more likely an issue of systemic racism rather than a matter of chance, in which case, even if median starting places differed, you might expect a greater degree of parity. And, by the way, to me, systemic racism includes situations that might make groups of people give up, feel less capable, or think that they couldn't be making more. A complex issue.
Also, the foreign-born Latinos were making $24,900 in 2007, or $7,100 less than U.S.-born. And today they still make less, though only $1,700 less because of the fall of U.S.-born Latino incomes. Not economically inspiring.
Thanks for reading Latino Incomes Higher Than Before The Great Recession -- Unless They Were U.S.-Born - Forbes. Please share...!
0 Comment for "Latino Incomes Higher Than Before The Great Recession -- Unless They Were U.S.-Born - Forbes"