
City Of Long Beach Latino Economic Summit
Release Date: 2019-01-09
Dear Friends,
This Tuesday I attended the Latino Economic Summit at the Long Beach Convention Center where we presented the findings from the first of its kind Latino Economic Profile. This policy forum was hosted by Centro C.H.A., CSULB and the City's Economic Department, California Department of Social Services and Mayor Robert Garcia, and served as an opportunity to disseminate key findings from the Economic Profile. The profile includes statistics about various indicators including population, education, employment, income, poverty, and health; "17,000 Latinos are enrolled in college, accounting for 44% of Long Beach's collegiate residents" and "the labor force participation rate among Long Beach Latinos is 69.3% as compared to 65.2% among all other working-age Long Beach residents" are examples of some of the data presented in the report.
Over the last year, my office and I were fortunate to have been a part of the planning committee for this important report. The data contained in the profile will assist tremendously in developing policies that are responsive to the City's changing demographics, obtaining additional grants from foundations and other funding entities to support the work that so many of our local community-based organizations are doing to make gains in underserved communities in Long Beach.
As policymakers, we have an important role to make sure that we are engaging experts in various fields, academics, and practitioners to weigh in on some of the difficult decisions that we make and to include people of all backgrounds in the policy-making process.
When it comes to digital inclusion, studies show that nearly 80% of Latinos have access to the internet but many can only access via a smartphone. With so many web-based services from healthcare to job applications, it is important for all residents to be reliably connected, our vision zero for digital inclusion. I stressed that our digital inclusion policy in Long Beach is inclusive of people of all backgrounds and ages. While we discussed these issues with a focus on the Latino community, these challenges are not unique to this community and we must address retraining and retooling in the African American, Cambodian and Asian Pacific Islander communities and so many other groups in Long Beach.
The Latino Economic Profile is intended to be a conversation starter around policy considerations, serve a baseline for further study and to help inform action moving forward. Some additional key findings include:
Population
- Latinos account for 44.5% of the City's population
- The Latino share of Long Beach's population has increased by 12.5% compared to 4.5% growth in LA County
- 11.8% of Long Beach foreign-born Latinos under the age of 18 are naturalized citizens
- The citizenship rate has more than doubled over the last decade
- The population of foreign-born Latino Children in Long Beach has declined by 57.4% over the last decade
Income
- The median annual income of Latino households in Long Beach is $52,000
- Long Beach Latino household incomes have increased by 48.3% over the last decade, but have remained systematically lower than overall household incomes
Health
- 23,000 Long Beach Latinos do not have health Insurance
- 8.8% of Latino seniors in Long Beach are without health insurance, compared to 0.4% of all other seniors
For more information about the study and how you can participate in future efforts to share this information please contact Centro C.H.A. at admin@centrocha.org
In Service,
Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez