Hillary Clinton’s economic ideas would be big for Latinos. That’s no coincidence.

Washington Post (The Fix)

By Janell Ross

July 13, 2015

Hillary Clinton’s economic ideas would be big for Latinos. That’s no coincidence. 

On Monday morning, Hillary Clinton laid out how she would narrow economic inequality and deal with the economic struggles of ordinary Americans. And later Monday, she'll head to the National Council of La Raza convention in Kansas City and likely repeat many of the same themes.

And maybe that's a coincidence of scheduling, but it's no coincidence that a lot of Clinton's proposals would be particularly beneficial to workers of color -- especially Latinos.

Here's the crux of what Clinton is talking about Monday:

As part of her workforce focus, Clinton will decry that women’s participation in the workforce has stalled after decades of growth and that many working parents, especially single mothers, have passed up job opportunities because of family obligations. She will preview policies on child care, paid leave and paid sick days.

Clinton’s second area of focus is reducing income inequality. She will assert that the current economy unfairly rewards some work, such as financial trading, more than other work. She will celebrate Obama’s new rules on overtime but also urge raising the minimum wage and overhauling the tax code to make the wealthiest Americans pay what she considers their fair share. She will also back collective bargaining and reducing health-care costs.

Clinton will introduce these ideas in Monday’s speech and then roll out more detailed prescriptions on issues such as college affordability, paid leave, wage growth and corporate accountability throughout the summer.

Clinton's speech at The New School in New York City and her policy proposals have been billed as ideas that will benefit the middle class. But during her speech, Clinton herself made some explicit references to workers of color. And Latino workers make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the workforce but are concentrated in lower-paying jobs with limited benefits. Hence, the kind of jobs that benefit most from things like paid sick leave, child care and maternity leave.

Here's what you need to know to understand why Clinton's policy ideas may have particular meaning to Latino voters.

Latinos made up about 16.6 percent of the American workforce in June. That's a figure that's expected to climb to nearly 20 percent within the next five years.

In 2011, when the U.S. Labor Department's statistical arm completed a deep dive on Latino workers in the recovery, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that about 20 percent of Latino workers over the age of 16 were employed part-time. More recent figures from 2014 indicate that the portion working part-time has grown to nearly 23 percent of the Hispanic labor force. But the majority told the government's statistics team they were doing so for non-economic reasons such as the need to care for young children or older family members. So child-care issues and family responsibilities weigh heavily on Latino workers.

While the gap between white, black and Latino high school graduates going on to college has nearly disappeared, the portion of Latinos who graduate continues to lag further than every other group. In that 2011 look at Latino workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only one in six -- about 17 percent -- of Latinos 25 or older have completed a bachelor's degree.

This pattern is part of the reason that the majority of Latino workers -- about 58 percent -- are employed in the service industry, construction, maintenance, transportation and production industries and a far smaller portion -- about 32 percent-- work in professional or management jobs.

That also means that large numbers of Latino workers do not enjoy benefits that for many white-collar American workers are now part of the norm such as paid sick time, paid vacation days, partially paid maternity and/or paternity leave, extended time off to care for a sick relative or attend to their own serious health challenges and employer-provided health or life insurance.

The industries in which Latino workers are clustered also explains part of the yawning wage gaps between white workers and workers of color -- particularly Latinas. Latinas employed full-time earn about 56 cents to every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men employed full time, according to a National Women's Law Center analysis of 2013 Census data. That's compared to 64 cents on the dollar for full-time black female workers and 77 cents for white women working full time.

With  that reality mind, the Clinton campaign knows that Clinton needs Latino workers who are also registered voters to turn out to vote in the upcoming Democratic primaries and the general election, should she make it that far. For Obama, some of these workers helped him win key swing states such as Nevada and Florida in 2008 and 2012.

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