Latinos in the US make up the fifth largest economy in the world

The contribution of the Latino community to the US gross domestic product currently amounts to 3.6 trillion dollars. If Latinos in that country were a single nation, they would be the fifth largest economy in the world, only smaller than the United States (in total), China, Japan and Germany,” said the director of Latino Donor Collaborative, Ana Teresa Ramírez.

A study by this organization dedicated to research on the Latino community in the United States indicates that with 37 million people, this population group is the second in that country (of that total, Mexicans represent 60 percent), only behind the majority Anglo-Saxon. Contrary to the narrative that is intended to be spread about an irregular immigration situation, 80 percent are US citizens and the majority of those who are not have a stay permit.

With figures from the US Departments of State and Labor, Latinos found more than 50 percent of all new businesses in the United States; This also comes from this immigrant spirit, of adventure, of taking risks. This means a greater rate of economic presence than other groups, since Another data that is impressive is from the Department of Commerce: Latinos acquire, precisely because of this strong generational growth that we have, 49.5 of all new homesRamirez said.

Projections from the US Department of Labor anticipate that 78 percent of the new workforce in the next 10 years will be Latino. When we talk about deportations in the United States, it simply does not make sense . That is, we grow faster, We are not only more enormous, but also, we are going to become more and more enormous.

Other data on Latin insertion in the United States: eight out of 10 Latinos speak English; 93 percent of all Latino youth were born in the United States; The youth of our community stands out among other racial groups, since the most common age is 12 years old and that of non-Latinos in the United States is 58 years old.

Contribution to technology

Highlighting the weight of the Latin community, the researcher reported: if they were taken as an economy, it would be larger than those of Russia, France, England or Brazil. If Latinos in the United States were an economy, they would be the third fastest growing in the entire globe, only China and India would be growing faster.

Ramírez stressed that contrary to preconceived ideas about Latino immigrants in the United States, the current impact goes beyond farm work, the construction industry or services.

Growth, right now, no longer comes from those industries, it comes from technology; We have a study that reveals that the largest growth in terms of communities within the technology industry has come from us. We are still at 8 percent, but we are growing very quickly.

According to the Organization of Latino Engineers in the United States, 4 percent of engineering students were Latino in 2010. By 2021, that increased to 16 percent. Perception and reality are completely differenthe assured.

For every dollar of remittances, Mexicans allocate five to paying taxes and services in the United States

Braulio Carbajal

For every dollar that Mexican migrants send to their families, they contribute at least five dollars to the US economy through the payment of taxes and services such as social security and health, according to information from a specialized organization that brings together Latin American central banks.

Between paying taxes, spending on food, health, social security, housing and other needs, migrants with and without papers who live and work in the United States annually inject more than 305 billion dollars into that country’s economy, reveals the Latin American and Caribbean Remittances Forum. This amount multiplies remittances to Mexico by five, which between January and November of last year – latest information available – totaled 59.5 billion dollars.

Those 305 billion dollars, at the current exchange rate, are equivalent to about 6 trillion 400 billion pesos. To measure the size of this contribution made by the more than 7 million Mexican immigrants (not including those born there) who work in the United States, it is greater than the 5 trillion 300 billion pesos that the Service of Tax Administration of Mexico in 2025.

According to information from the Remittance Forum, which belongs to the Center for Latin American Monetary Studies (Cemla, sponsored by the central banks of the region), the annual labor force of Mexican workers in the United States, that is, the salary of all of them In one year, it amounts to 367,446 million dollars, which means that 83 percent, or more than 4 of every 5 dollars they earn, stay in that country.

The above means that only 17 percent of the remuneration they receive for their work is sent to their families in Mexico, just over 60 billion dollars.

Although there is no disaggregated data on the exact amount that compatriots allocate to each item, Jesús Cervantes, general director of the Remittance Forum, highlights that 83.1 percent of the annual labor income obtained in that country by all Mexican migrants is allocated to local expenses for maintenance, health, payment of taxes, social security and covering liabilities, including the payment of mortgages, and possibly a portion of savings..

A 2022 study by the Fiscal and Economic Policy Institute indicates that around 10.9 million undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes. According to official data, in the United States, of every six Latino migrants, one is Mexican.

During his inauguration last Monday, Donald Trump declared a state of emergency on the border with Mexico, beginning a plan to carry out mass deportations of undocumented Mexican migrants. According to Cemla, the main sectors of activity in which Mexicans work in the United States are construction, with 23.5 percent, followed by professional and administrative services and food, lodging and recreation, with 13.7 percent each; Then there are those of manufacturing and commerce, with 10.7 and 9.1 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, 5 percent work in the agricultural sector, but with an important weight in the total agricultural occupation in some US states.

In 2024, Mexicans represented 4.7 percent of total US employment, which amounts to 161 million 345 thousand 532 workers.