Pew Hispanic Center

Due mainly to a slump in the construction industry, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the U.S. rose to 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008, well above the 4.7% rate for all non-Hispanics. As recently as the end of 2006, the gap between those two rates had shrunk to an historic low of 0.5 percentage points--4.9% for Latinos compared with 4.4% for non-Latinos, on a seasonally adjusted basis.

The spike in Hispanic unemployment has hit immigrants especially hard. Their unemployment rate was 7.5% in the first quarter of this year, marking the first time since 2003 that a higher percentage of foreign-born Latinos was unemployed than native-born Latinos. 
 

 READ MORE: http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=88

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