Latino Labor Report, First Quarter 2004
The “jobless recovery” may have turned around, but gains for Latinos have not been widespread. Immigrant Latinos, especially the most recent arrivals, have captured the most jobs.
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Kochhar has over 20 years of research experience in the areas of labor economics and price and wage measurement and analysis. Prior to joining the Pew Hispanic Center, he was Senior Economist at Joel Popkin and Company, where he served as a consultant to government agencies, private firms, international agencies, and labor unions. Kochhar is a past President of the Society of Government Economists. His doctoral thesis at Brown University focused on the theory of labor migration.
The “jobless recovery” may have turned around, but gains for Latinos have not been widespread. Immigrant Latinos, especially the most recent arrivals, have captured the most jobs.
Latinos experienced substantial gains in the U.S. labor market in 2003. The number of Hispanics added to the employment rolls was twice as high as in 2002, and unemployment eased downward. For the first time since January 2000, Latinos experienced increases in employment that consistently outpaced their population growth in the United States.
Latinos in the U.S. labor force were slow to recover from the effects of the 2001 recession, lagging non-Hispanic whites in restoring employment growth and the unemployment rate to their pre-recession levels. Immigrants and young Latinos encountered particularly hard times but college-educated Hispanics experienced substantial improvements in employment levels. These are among the key findings of this report on the labor market experience of Latino workers since the economic slowdown began at the end of 2000.