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SALT LAKE CITY — Latino population growth has slowed in the U.S. since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a report from Pew Research Center published on Thursday.
And experts say the trend is happening in Utah as well.
The U.S. Hispanic population grew annually by 2.8 percent between 2007 and 2014 — down from an annual growth rate of 4.4 percent between 2000 and 2007, according to the Pew report.
That in itself is down from a 5.8 percent annual growth rate in the 1990s, according to Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at Pew Research Center and an author on the report.
"It's a trend that's been happening for a while," Lopez said. "There are some changes underway in the Latino community."
Lopez said the trend is due to two big changes: Less immigration from Latin American countries and a decline in birth rates among Hispanic women in the U.S.
The recession — with its catastrophic effects on the housing and job market — put a damper on the number of Hispanic immigrants arriving from other countries, he said. In fact, the pattern of immigration from Mexico reversed in 2009: More people started going back than came to the U.S.
As more Hispanic immigrant women have aged out of their childbearing years and more U.S.-born young Hispanic women are experiencing lower fertility rates, the growth of the Hispanic population began to slow as well, Lopez said.
Pam Perlich, director of demographic research at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, said the same story is taking place in Utah.
"Once the global economic crisis hit, it was like someone flipped a switch," Perlich said. "All those jobs went away and people who had been here for several generations or who had good networks could stay. … But there were many people who were really pretty recent immigrants who didn't have that good social safety net built here and they had to return."
Many of the jobs lost in the recession were in construction, which had a high concentration of Latin American immigrants, she said.
The recession also triggered a decline in birth rates across racial and ethnic lines, with people putting off having kids at a level unprecedented in the modern era, according to Perlich.
"This recession has really left its mark, financially and demographically, on Utah and the nation," she said.
Still, don't expect the slowdown in Latino population growth to diminish their impact on the economy and politics for another two or three decades, according to Perlich.
Latino population growth in US slows since 2007 due to lower immigration f/Latin America & falling fertility rates https://t.co/GrnYH8aYZ7
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) September 8, 2016
In the long term, the Hispanic population continues to climb and is very young, meaning that their impact on the nation will continue to grow, she said.
In Utah, according to the Pew report, the median age of the Hispanic population is 24 years old — six years younger than the state median of 30 years old.
And nearly 40 percent of the 397,000 Utahns who are Hispanic are below the age of 18, according to the report.
"The Latino population is in the most productive years of our lives," said Tony Yapias, the former director of Hispanic affairs for the state of Utah and a local activist for the Latino community.
Yapias said he can see the Pew report’s findings playing out locally.
"There were no jobs and there was no reason to come if there were no jobs" during the recession, Yapias said. "But with the families that stayed here, they've maintained themselves. That's probably a general characteristic of our communities — that our families are established now."
The Nation’s Latino Population Is Defined by Its Youth | Pew Research Center https://t.co/neVlVX6nSy
— VIDAeu (@vidaeuorg) August 24, 2016
Yapias moved to Utah in 1981 when he did his shopping at one small grocery store on the west side of Salt Lake City, he said.
Now, many Latino businesses in Utah are growing and many families are beginning to send their children to college and into the workforce, he said.
Although the South continues to lead the nation in Latino population growth, the Pew report found that many small counties — including two Utah counties — saw the fastest growth in their Latino population.
Duchesne County was ninth in the nation with 85 percent growth of its Latino population between 2007 and 2014 to a total of 1,642, according to the report.
Uintah County ranked 18th in the nation with a 70 percent growth in its Latino population to a total of 2,959 in 2014.
Many counties that had a small base of Hispanics tended to appear high on the list, with three counties in North Dakota topping it, something the Pew report mentions.
Because of the small populations of these counties to begin with, Perlich also cautioned against drawing any conclusions from Utah's appearance on the list.
"Those are very small samples and those are very small counties," she said.
Still, Perlich said, the overall growth of the Hispanic population in Utah is “permanent and ongoing and cumulative and irreversible.”
"We’re becoming much more internationally connected and much more multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic,” she said.
“That’s the face of Utah into the future and in the nation." Email: dchen@deseretnews.com Twitter: DaphneChen_
