Income & Wages

Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, north, east, south or west, the U.S. public says it's time for a big boost for the lowest paid.

In order to better understand the impact of some proposals before Congress, this fact sheet examines the labor force status of unauthorized workers who have been in the country for five years or less.

Beyond partisanship -- and behind those healthy economic indicators -- Americans may be seeing something that most economists overlook.

Hispanics and whites perform different types of work in the labor market. Moreover, the occupational divide between the two largest segments of the labor force appears to be widening.

Hispanic workers enjoyed significant gains in employment in 2004. But the concentration of Latinos in relatively low-skill occupations contributed to reduced earnings for them for the second year in a row.

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.

This survey was designed to explore the attitudes and experiences of Latinos on a wide variety of topics.

The Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation 2002 National Survey of Latinos comprehensively explores the attitudes and experiences of Hispanics on a wide variety of topics. This survey was designed to capture the diversity of the Latino population by including almost 3,000 Hispanics from various backgrounds and groups so that in addition to describing Latinos overall, comparisons can be made among key Hispanic subgroups as well.

The Latino labor force is experiencing a major generational shift as increasing numbers of today's young native-born Latino Americans become workers. This report describes the wage, employment outcomes, and labor market attachment of Latino adults by age and generation during the economic expansion of the late 1990s.