November

American citizens who trace their ancestors to Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America are the largest ethnic minority in the United States, accounting for 17.8 percent of the population in 2016.

In the Federal Reserve’s Fifth District, the Hispanic population accounts for 8.3 percent of the total population, ranging from 10.9 percent in the District of Columbia to 1.5 percent in West Virginia. But this group is growing much faster than the overall population, making them important contributors to the regional and national economies.

A look at labor market indicators provides some insight on the disparity in outcomes for the Hispanic population relative to the population overall, a topic recently discussed by Fed Governor Lael Brainard. For example, labor force participation — defined as the number of people employed or looking for work as a share of the working-age population — is higher for Hispanics nationally, and especially in the Fifth District.

Higher rates of labor force participation, by definition, suggest that Hispanics are more likely than the overall population to be working or looking for employment. But this does not always coincide with lower unemployment rates — the ratio of the unemployed to the labor force — for Hispanics. For the U.S. as a whole in 2016, the unemployment rate for Hispanics was almost a full percentage point higher than for the overall population. Across Fifth District jurisdictions, however, the unemployment rate was more often lower for the Hispanic population — and by a sizeable margin in the District of Columbia, South Carolina and Virginia. The Hispanic unemployment rate was much higher than that for the overall population in Maryland, and rates for the two groups were roughly equal in North Carolina.

For charts on these trends, see our recent post in Regional Matters, a series providing an in-depth look at regional and national economic trends that matter to the Fifth District.