Unemployment rises sharply among Latino Immigrants in 2008.

The current recession is having an especially severe impact on employment prospects for immigrant Hispanics, according to an analysis of the latest Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. The unemployment rate for foreign-born Hispanics increased from 5.1% to 8.0%, or by 2.9 percentage points, from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. During this same time period, the unemployment rate for all persons in the labor market increased from 4.6% to 6.6%, or by 2.0 percentage points.

Among immigrant Latinos, the share of the working-age population (16 and older) that is employed fell by 2.8 percentage points, from 67.5% in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 64.7% in the fourth quarter of 2008.1 Among all persons of working age, the employment rate decreased by 1.6 percentage points, from 63.2% to 61.6%, in the first year of the recession.

The recession has also had a strong negative effect on blacks and native-born Hispanics in the labor market. Blacks are currently the only major racial and ethnic group whose unemployment rate is in double digits, 11.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008. Native-born Hispanics had the second highest rate of unemployment (9.5%) in the fourth quarter of 2008. However, changes in the employment rate and other indicators of labor market activity during the recession have been less severe for them than for foreign-born Hispanics.

This report summarizes labor market outcomes for Hispanics and other racial and ethnic groups in the ongoing recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007. The Pew Hispanic Center released two reports in 2008 that captured the early phases of the recession. The first report, in June 2008, focused on the construction slowdown and showed that outcomes for Latinos had turned markedly worse during 2007, even prior to the recession. The second report, in December 2008, showed that a small but significant decline had occurred in the share of Latino immigrants active in the U.S. labor force through the third quarter of 2008. This report updates labor market trends through the fourth quarter of 2008, capturing the first full year of the recession.

The data for this report are derived from the Current Population Survey, a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted jointly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Data from three monthly surveys were combined to create larger sample sizes and to conduct the analysis on a quarterly basis. The universe for the analysis is the civilian, noninstitutional population ages 16 and older.2

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1Unless otherwise indicated, estimates in this report are nonseasonally adjusted.
2Residents of institutions, such as nursing homes and prisons, are not part of the Current Population Survey sample.