U.S. Latino immigrants generate $1.6 trillion in GDP, report says

U.S. Latino immigrants accounted for $1.6 trillion in GDP in 2023, according to a new research report by the Latino Donor Collaborative, contributing to an overall purchasing power for U.S. Latinos of $4.1 trillion. The 2023 data is the most recent year included in the study.

U.S. Latino GDP, measuring the economic impact of the cohort, was up 50% in 2023 from 2015, boosted by increasing education, entrepreneurship and labor force participation, said economists with Arizona State University, who conducted the research. For comparison, the estimated GDP of non-Latinos in the U.S. grew by 17% over the same time frame.

The report comes as the Trump administration is charging ahead with an unprecedented effort to remove undocumented immigrants from the U.S.

California’s economy alone saw $989 billion of Latino GDP in 2023 and is projected to surpass a trillion dollars in 2025, according to the report. Texas, Florida and New York each also have Latino GDPs worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

And Latino spending is making up a larger share of the overall economy.

As baby boomers age, their share of spending declines by about 4% annually, according to the report, and U.S. Latinos are poised to fill the spending gap. Their share of U.S. consumption is growing by more than 3% annually. Actual consumer spending is up nearly 5% annually compared with 2.4% for non-Latinos, driven by population changes and rise in disposable income.

“It’s very clear — if there’s a silver bullet for the economy beyond AI, it’s the Latino consumer. They are workers, entrepreneurs and consumers, driving significant growth across sectors in the American economy, ” said Sol Trujillo, co-founder of the Latino Donor Collaborative and chairman of the Trujillo Group.

“The velocity of the rise of brands that are marketing to us Latinos as their mainstream customers should be a wake-up call to every CEO and CMO, ” said Beatriz Ace vedo, CEO and co-founder of Suma Wealth on stage Wednesday at Velocity, an economic conference in Los Angeles where the Latino GDP report was presented.

Acevedo highlighted companies that have seen their growth accelerate along with their share of American Latino customers:

• Modelo in 2023 overtook Budweiser to become America’s No. 1 selling beer brand by capturing 50% of the Latino consumer market in the U.S. (Modelo just this week lost that crown to Michelob Ultra.)
• T-Mobile leveraged the growth of its Latino market share to leap frog AT&T and Verizon to become No. 1 in subscriber growth.
• Dr. Pepper surged passed Pepsi to capture the second spot in soda behind Coke by doubling its Latino consumer share over the past decade.
• The WNBA dramatically grew its U.S. Latino viewership on television and subsequently saw the most viewer growth of all professional sports.
• Kia went from No. 6 in new car sales to No. 11 after a 44.5% increase in Hispanic market sales over the last 5 years.

But mass deportations could undermine the business opportunities and derail that economic progress, experts said at Velocity.

Dennis Hoffman, ASU economics professor and the lead author of the U.S. Latino GDP report, warned deporting as many as 8.3 million undocumented workers could lead to losses of more than 19.5 million workers because of the lost revenue and economic activity provided by undocumented workers.

“We need to fix our immigration system. I’m not suggesting open borders. I’m not suggesting we allow people to work persistently without papers. But our system is fixable,” Hoffman said. “We can sponsor productive, hardworking, undocumented workers and not suffer the pain that we would have to incur if if we actually did something like this [mass deportations].”

Hoffman said his simulation predicts total GDP could decline by $2.3 trillion or $7.7%.