The $4 Trillion Force

Latinos drive 30% of U.S. economic growth — and it’s only getting stronger.

Hey Small Biters,

​Numbers can feel cold. But these numbers? They pulse with life.

This week, UCLA released a report showing that the U.S. Latino GDP has reached a record-breaking $4.1 trillion in 2023. That’s not just a stat — it’s the fifth-largest economy in the world, if U.S. Latinos were counted separately. Bigger than the UK. Bigger than France. A force often overlooked, but impossible to ignore now.

And here’s the heart of it: Latinos make up just 19.5% of the U.S. population, yet they’ve driven 30.6% of the country’s GDP growth since 2019. Amid pandemics, policy fights, and endless doubt, this community keeps building.

The report calls Latinos the “growth spot” of the national economy — but it’s more than that. It’s resilience quantified.

Even with COVID-19 hitting the Latino community hardest, this GDP has grown faster than China, and twice as fast as the U.S. non-Latino economy. Health, education, labor, spending — Latinos surged in all of them. Their consumer spending alone hit $2.7 trillion, larger than the economies of Texas or New York.