This file was prepared for electronic distribution by the inforM staff.
Questions or comments should be directed to inform-editor@umail.umd.edu.


Facts On Working Women

U.S. Department of Labor
Women's Bureau 

No. 89-1
August 1989


WOMEN OF HISPANIC ORIGIN IN THE LABOR FORCE

The population of women of Hispanic origin has risen
dramatically over the past decade in the United States.
The number of Hispanic women age 16 and over rose from
3.9 million in 1977 to 6.7 million in 1988--a 70 percent
increase. The largest subgroup was women of Mexican
origin (3.8 million), followed by women of Puerto Rican
origin (894,000) and Cuban origin (432,000) (see table
1). The remaining 1.5 million were of other Spanish
descent. (1)

The fertility rate of Hispanic women in 1987 was
significantly higher than that of women not of Hispanic
origin - 95.8 total births per 1,000 women 18 to 44 years
old as compared with 68.8 per 1,000 women, respectively.
This high fertility rate stems partially from the fact
that 71 percent of the noninstitutional population of
Hispanic women is between the primary childbearing ages
of 16 to 44. Therefore, we can expect the overall
Hispanic population to continue to grow at a rapid rate. 


MEDIAN AGE--The median age of Hispanic women was only
26.1 years in March 1988.  Overall, Hispanic women are
younger than Black and White women whose median ages are
28.5 years and 31.2 years, respectively.  Cuban women are
the only exception.  With a median age rapidly
approaching 40 years (39.0 years), they are generally an
older group. This higher median age could result from an
aging Cuban population, lower child birth rates and the
fact that there has been little immigration of Cubans to
the United States in recent years. 


LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION--Of the 54.7 million women in
the civilian labor force in 1988, 3.6 millon, or 6.5
percent, were of Hispanic origin. Of this 3.6 million,
58.5 percent were of Mexican origin, 10.4 percent were of
Puerto Rican origin, 6.6 percent were of Cuban origin,
and 24.5 percent were of other Hispanic origin. Hispanic
women reached a milestone in 1986, when, for the first
time, their labor force participation rate reached 50
percent. Even though 53.2 percent of all Hispanic women
were in the labor force in 1988, this figure was somewhat
lower than that for non-Hispanic women (56.6 percent).
However, the labor force participation rate for all
Hispanics (women and men, 67.4 percent) is higher than
that for all Whites--66.2 percent, and higher than for
all Blacks--63.8 percent. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that the
number of Hispanic women in the labor force will increase
by 2.7 million to 5.8 million and that their labor force
participation rate will be 57 percent in the year 2000. 

According to the U. S. Bureau of the Census, other
Spanish individuals are those whose origins are from
Spain or they are persons identifying themselves
generally as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispano, and the
Latino. 


	                        Table 1
	          Hispanic Women in the Labor Force, 
	    16 Years of Age and Over, 1988 Annual Averages 
	                (Numbers in thousands)

                                        		    Puerto
                    			All       Mexican-  Rican-    Cuban 
                    			Hispanic  Origin    Origin    Origin
                    			Women     Women     Women     Women
                    			-------------------------------------
 Civilian Noninstitutional Population    6,721     3,880     894       432
 Civil Labor Force  			 3,573     2,090     370       237
 Percent of Pop.    			 53.2      53.9      41.4      54.9
 Employed           			 3,227     1,889     340       224
 Unemployed         			 296       201       30        12
 Unemployment Rate  			 8.3       9.6       8.1       5.2
_______
Source: U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor
Statistics, Employment and Earnings, January 1989. 


EMPLOYMENT--Over the past decade, Hispanic women
increased their employment by 94 percent--from 1.7
million in 1978 to 3.3 million in 1988. Even though they
represented only 6.9 percent of the total female
noninstitutional population in 1988, they accounted for
12.5 percent of the increase in total female employment
since 1980. 


UNEMPLOYMENT--Unemployment for Hispanic women has
continued to follow a constant pattern--higher than that
of White women (4.7 percent) but lower than for Black
women (11.7 percent). Their 1988 unemployment rate was
8.3 percent. Cuban-origin women continued to have the
lowest unemployment rate among Hispanic women (see table
1). In fact, their 1988 rate of 5.2 percent was lower
than the 1988 annual average of 5.6 percent for all
women. Women of Mexican origin had an unemployment rate
of 9.6 percent in 1988. This was the highest among all
Hispanic women--a position long held by Puerto Rican
women. 


EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT--As of March 1988, the civilian
labor force of Hispanic women could be divided into
basically three educational groups--those with less than
4 years of high school (34 percent), those who completed
high school (37 percent), and those with 1 or more years
of college (29 percent). Of the 1.2 million in the labor
force that did not finish high school, 651,000 or 54
percent had completed only 8 years or less of schooling.
The median years of school completed by Hispanic women in
the labor force was 12.4 in March 1988. Of all employed
Hispanic women in March 1988, only 37 percent have 4
years of high school as their highest level of
educational attainment. Only 11 percent have completed 4
or more years of college. Median years of school
completed for those that were employed in March 1988 was
12.5 years. 

Among Spanish-origin women 25 years and over, just over
one-third of Mexicans and Puerto Ricans had graduated
from high school in 1980. Here, again, Cuban women
surpassed their other Hispanic counterparts with a 53
percent graduation rate in 1980. 


OCCUPATIONS--In March 1988, 3.2 million Hispanic females
were job holders. The largest proportion of employed
Hispanic women (41.1 percent) were concentrated in the
technical, sales, and administrative support occupations
(see table 2). Many are employed as sales workers,
cashiers, computer operators, typists, secretaries,
receptionists, bookkeepers, or teacher aides. 

Compared with all women, Hispanic women are
overrepresented in the service and the operator,
fabricator, and laborer occupations. In the service area,
they are found most frequently as private household
cleaners and servants, child care workers, waitresses,
and cooks. In the operator, fabricator, and laborer
occupations, they are almost exclusively textile sewing
machine operators with the remainder as assemblers and
miscellaneous machine operators. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics has predicted most of these occupations will
grow slowly or decline between now and the year 2000. 

Hispanic-origin women tend to be employed in precision
production, craft, and repair jobs more frequently than
do other women--3.5 percent as compared with 2.2 percent,
respectively. Working mostly as electronic equipment
assemblers, dressmakers, and food batchmakers, 86 percent
in this occupational group are working in the precision
production job classification. 


INCOME AND EARNINGS--The 1987 median income for Hispanic
women who worked year round, full time was $14,893. This
represented a 52 percent increase since 1980. However, it
remained 15 percent below the median income for all women
($17,504) and 17 percent below that of Hispanic men
($17,872). Hispanic families with the householder as a
year-round, full-time worker had a median income of
$28,848 and Hispanic households maintained by women had
a median income of $19,760 in 1987. The earnings of
Hispanic wives accounted for a substantial portion of
family income. Their contributions to total family income
were approximately 32 percent on average. 


FAMILIES MAINTAINED BY WOMEN--Similar to the trend for
the rest of the Nation, the percentage of Hispanic
families maintained by women is rising. Of the 4.6
million Hispanic families in the United States in 1988,
1 million were headed by women. Twenty-six percent (1.2
million) of all Hispanic families and 52 percent
(555,000) of Hispanic families maintained by women had
incomes which placed them below the poverty level in
1987. Hispanic families maintained by women who had
earnings below the poverty level contained 1.2 million
related children under the age of 18 and 191,000 other
family members.


		                  Table 2
	              Occupations of Employed Women, 
                      by Hispanic Origin, March 1988
                         (Percent distribution)

			                              Hispanic Women
			                    --------------------------------
                        			                Puerto
			                      All     Mexican-  Rican- Cuban 
		   	               All  Hispanic  Origin    Origin Origin
			              Women  Women    Women     Women  Women
			              ---------------------------------------
Total         				100.0  100.0    100.0     100.0  100.0
Managerial & Professional Specialty     25.3   15.7    12.6      20.5    27.3 
Technical,  Sales, and
   Administrative 			45.1   41.1    41.7      44.7    41.8
Service  Occupations   			17.7   21.7    21.9      15.3    13.0
Precision, Production,
   Craft, and Repair        		2.3    3.5     3.6       3.6     3.2
Operators, Fabricators,
   and Laborers  			8.8    16.6    18.0      15.8    14.7
Farming,  Fishing,and Forestry      	0.9    1.5     2.1       ----    ----

_______
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the
Census, The Hispanic Population in the United States:
March 1988 (Advance Report). 


NOTES

(1)  According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, other Spanish individuals are
those whose origins are from Spain or they are persons identifying themselves
as Spanish, Spanish-American, Hispano, and the Latino.



The Voice of Working Women for 70 Years
1920 - 1990