FEBRUARY, 2022
U.S. Latinos’ favorite car is now America’s top-seller.
If you were at L’ATTITUDE 2021, you saw the data that U.S. Latinos have accounted for 68% of the growth in new car sales over the past year. We have now learned that also in 2020, new vehicle registrations by U.S. Latinos outnumbered those by Black Americans and Asian Americans combined.
According to IHS Markit, the U.S. authority on automotive sales, in 2020, Toyota was the favorite auto brand among U.S. Latino new car buyers.
Then, last month the big story in the automotive world was that for the first time in 90 years, GM is not the top-selling brand in America, having been replaced by none other than Toyota.
It appears the New Mainstream Economy is clearly on display in the automotive sector.
How do you stream entertainment?
As part of our L’ATTITUDE Survey completed by attendees at L’ATTITUDE 2021, we asked how you watch entertainment at home. The streaming platform that 76% of respondents said they use always or often is Netflix, followed by Amazon Prime at 46%, and Hulu at 33%. That is an example of why Netflix is the largest and most well-known streaming service.
What does “largest” really mean? The digital publication, MacKeeper, compared the populations of the 30 largest countries to the Netflix subscriber base. They found that the company’s 203,700,000 subscribers is equal to the population of the 8th largest country in the world. Netflix has more subscribers than the populations of Russia, Mexico, and Japan.
Not far behind is Amazon Prime, whose subscriber base makes that brand equivalent in size to the 10th largest country. It boasts 150,000,000 subscribers.
Hulu is well back, but also rising quickly. Its 38,800,000 subscribers would make it the 50th largest country in the world, and even so, larger than the populations of Canada and Morocco.
Entertainment at home has become even more important due to the pandemic. U.S. Latinos typically buy over 25% of all movie tickets sold in U.S. theaters. However, when we asked how many movies you watched in a theater last month, the average of your answers was 0.7. At the same time, the average for watching movies at home was nearly 5.
We also asked in what language do your prefer to watch entertainment and English was the choice of 92% of all respondents.
Warning signs are everywhere, but is anyone paying attention?
Using the data available from the U.S. Department of Labor, the Census Bureau, and the Federal Reserve, one can compile an accurate view of our country’s overall labor picture. The question that arises when doing so is, “Is anyone in Washington doing this?”
We know that our country has 159,820,000 jobs filled, and as of January the Department of Labor reported 10,600,000 unfilled jobs. By simply adding together the filled and unfilled jobs, we see the U.S. needs 170,420,000 workers to fill every job available.
At the same time, if one adds the 6,300,000 unemployed workers reported by the Department of Labor in January to the 159,820,000 people who are already working, that says we have a total labor force of 166,120,000.
So, it’s simple math to determine we have 4,300,000 fewer workers available than jobs that need to be filled. That’s the first flashing light for our economy.
The Government projects the U.S. Labor force will reach 163.5 million by end of 2022. To do so will require reducing the number of unemployed workers by 58%. While that would be good headline news, it is also not the full story.
- With workforce participation rates already at a remarkable high (79% as reported by the Labor Department in December, 2021) among 25 to 54 year old workers (making up 64% of our total workforce), any sources of new labor beyond unemployed are not obvious, other than immigration.
- Even if unemployment were reduced to zero, and we were using 100% of our labor resources, we still would have over 4 million unfilled jobs.
- Additional new jobs will be created during 2022 (we added over 6 million in 2021), which will require even more new workers.
- Adding further to our workforce deficit, it is estimated that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will add 1.5 million jobs each year over the next 10 years.
- We’re losing many of the workers we’ve had. Consider we have 3.3 million more retirees this year than in 2020.
- Huge Population but Minimal Voice
This mathematically obvious labor shortage should be the second warning sign in Washington because not only are more and more Baby Boomers leaving the workforce, but fewer and fewer replacements are being born as our birth rate is already below the replacement level.
So, to maintain the growth of our economy, we have to continue to add new workers to fill new jobs, resulting in more people being able to consume goods and services, which drives GDP.
It has been pointed out that immigrant workers could play a large role in helping alleviate shortages in a range of industries, including child care. And, more child care workers would have a downstream effect on mothers and older women who want to return to work but have left the workforce to help with child care.
All of this is why reforming our country’s immigration policies and processes is essential to everyone’s future as immigration is the resource for the human capital our aging economy requires in order to sustain economic growth. Immigration reform is becoming an emergency for our economy. Is anyone going to take action?
Are U.S. Latinos our country’s most productive cohort?
There is a case to be made for claiming U.S. Latino leadership in American productivity when productivity is measured by the rate of participation in the U.S. labor force of each population cohort. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Latinos have had a higher labor force participation rate than any other cohort since the turn of the century in 2000. Twenty-one years of having a higher portion of the U.S. Latino cohort working than any other is a testament to the U.S. Latino work ethic and commitment to economic growth and the American dream.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has not only reported participation rate data since 2000, but has also projected that rate going forward to 2030. Again, the U.S. Latino cohort will continue to have the highest rate according to their analysis.
In 2020, the U.S. Latino workforce participation rate was 65.6%, followed by Anglo-American at 61.8%, 60.5% for Black-Americans, and 61% for all others. While the projection is for a slight decline in 2030 among all cohorts, that decline is least for U.S. Latinos, at 64.7%, while Anglo-Americans will drop to 60.2%, Black-American to 59.2%, and 59.3% for all others.
Nina Otero-Warren to be first Latina (or Latino) featured on American currency.
Beginning this year and continuing through 2025, the U.S. Mint will issue up to five new quarters each year as part of the American Women Quarters Program in celebration of the accomplishments
and contributions made by women to the development and history
of our country.
Included among the women to be honored in 2022 is Nina Otero-Warren, a suffragist, the first woman superintendent of Santa Fe, New Mexico public schools, and in 1922 the first Latina to run for Congress. Now, she is the first from the U.S. Latino cohort to appear on American currency.
The American Women Quarters will feature contributions from a variety of fields, including, but not limited to, suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts. The women honored will be from ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds.
The first quarter as part of this program have started shipping and honoring the late writer and activist Maya Angelou. Other women to be honored this year in addition to Angelou and Otero-Warren are Wilma Mankiller, an activist and first woman elected as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; Sally Ride, a physicist and our country’s first woman astronaut; and Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood.