Under Obamanomics, Hispanics Hit Hardest -- Repost

On September 3, Vice President Joe Biden said: "The Recovery Act is doing more, faster and more efficiently and more effectively than most people expected." In July, U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN that his $787 billion stimulus package is "working exactly as we had anticipated…" Well then, perhaps they anticipated driving legal Hispanic immigrants out of the workforce because this group, along with the lesser-educated in general, is very clearly the hardest hit.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, unemployment among (legal or counted) Hispanics in August was 13.0%. That is up 60.5% from August 2008 and 20% since February of this year. But this rate masks the real job losses as a result of the recession.

As noted in an earlier post, the (legal or counted) Hispanic workforce population has been growing at annual rate of 3.3% from 2001 through 2008, 4.3% if you include the year 2000. However, between August 2008 and August 2009 the rate of increase in the Hispanic population was only 0.63%. Therefore, if the American workforce had been growing as usual, the number of Hispanics in the workforce would have been some 727,000 higher than it is now. Again, these are legal (or counted) immigrants*.

The 727,000 number represents actual jobs that would have been created in better times.

That means, the economy has actually shed AND not created many more jobs among the Hispanic population than the numbers indicate. Combining the actual Hispanic unemployment level (2.9 million) and the number of jobs not created (727,000) yields a total of 3.63 million, which is 15.8% of the potentially larger labor force (22.3 million + 727,000) as opposed to the currently reported 13.0% in the Hispanic population. That is about 95% higher than the unemployment rate of Hispanics in August 2008 and 45% higher than February of this year. And this is not the larger U6 number---unemployed, part-time and workers marginally-attached to the workforce---which is 16.5% for the entire civilian workforce. U6 which is not calculated for Hispanics, would certainly be much higher.

Of course, this argument, while interesting is totally academic, since, strictly speaking, you can’t lose something you haven’t created. Nevertheless, it does humanize the true severity of this recession. It also illustrates the ridiculousness of counting jobs saved or created, which is what this administration is trying to take credit for.

The good news is that unemployment in the African American community (15.1%) was up by a smaller amount since February---13%---versus 60.5% for Hispanics and 61.8% for whites. The best off among us remain college educated workers, a group which accounts for only 14.3% of the population. The unemployment rate for that group is 4.7%, up 14.6% since February. H.S. graduates fare as well as the economy as a whole, their unemployment rate is equal to the economy as a whole, or 9.7%, only 17% higher than February.

*The Center for Immigrations Studies, an immigration study group, estimates that some 1.7 million illegal immigrants may have returned to their home countries between the summer of 2007 and first quarter of 2009. Of that number, some 818,000 (~48%) were less educated Hispanic immigrants. In the last 12 months alone, the CIS estimates that 403,000 of this category returned to their home country. While notable, these figures would not be included in survey of total Hispanic workforce.