LatinaLista — Today’s Bureau of Labor Statistic’s employment report was not good news for Latinos. The report showed that the unemployment rate among Latinos edged up in May to now stand at 11 percent.
Though the unemployment rate among Latinos, compared to blacks, is lower, that it went up at all is troubling. In fact, it was only among adult men and Latinos that the rates went up. Everyone else, adult women (7.4 percent),
teenagers (24.6 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and blacks (13.6 percent) had little or no change.
We know that the major industry that lost jobs — construction — is one of the biggest employers of Latino workers. Hand-in-hand with construction is housing, which also employs many Latino workers.
As to be expected, the Romney campaign pounced on the data to reiterate his position that he, instead of Obama, can turn this economy around. Yet, the question has to be asked, For whom and how?
Romney has made it clear that he’s on the side of big business but it’s these very businesses that are laying off their employees. I have to question how Romney will get businesses to hire when he refuses to even tell Donald Trump to stop talking about the Obama birther issue on the campaign trail because, as he told CNBC reporter Carl Quintanilla in a morning interview: “…I don’t go around telling my supporters what they should think or what they should say.”
If he can’t tell the people who are supposed to be the closest to him to listen to him then what are the chances that he would tell businesses to forget their hesitation about the economy and start hiring?
The loss of Latinos in the workforce extends beyond just blue-collar, service-type work. It’s throughout corporate America, city governments, newspaper newsrooms across the nation, academic professionals and the list goes on.
In an ironic twist on a headline that was getting a lot of attention earlier in the month — The Browning of America, the same, it seems, can’t be said of the labor force.
What that means for the country is anyone’s guess.
Comment(4)
JohnJohns1
if hispanics continue to have only 1 issue( legalizing their illegal family members and friends) and vote for the pandering obama again they will only have themselves to blame when the jobless numbers show continued loses for them. harry reid was able to fool the hispanic community in navada, hispanics for the most part drooled on every lying word reid sprewed at them.
ednasmith
Big and small businesses are the real engine of this economy. It works and it has worked for over 200 years, despite ups and downs. What doesn’t work is Obama’s government centered economy, where the government has its hand on everything. It does work in Latin America, that’s why we come here. It doesn’t work in Europe either.
ednasmith
Big and small businesses are the real engines of this economy. It works and it has worked for over 200 years, despite ups and downs. What doesn’t work is Obama’s government centered economy, where the government has its hand on everything. It does not work in Latin America, that’s why we come here. It doesn’t work in Europe either.
Hispanics have been able to escape terrible economies in Latin America to come here to a market driven economy and make a very decent living for them and their family. This will never be possible if the USA moves to a government driven economy (aka socialist).
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