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Even though Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the U.S., they’re underrepresented across many industries, including finance, which can have long-term effects on the ability to grow wealth. Lack of access to capital markets makes it harder for Latinos to build meaningful wealth. It also means they’re underrepresented as shareholders of companies if they aren’t holding stocks and that they’re not lending a proportional voice to investing decisions. READ MORE AT CNBC

Millennial age groups – born mid 1980s to early 2000s – now have more money at hand than they have ever controlled before. And they are spending it, says Olivia Johnson, assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Consumer Sciences at the University of Houston College of Technology.

Tech gear, cars, travel, fashion, furniture, houses, home security, insurance – everything young consumers might want and would likely need – form a retail turf being fought over by companies seeking to occupy that market segment. READ MORE AT UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Volunteering is in fashion around the holidays but many abandon it at year's end. And while it completely upended my professional life, I will owe my future career as a doctor to being a volunteer. Not everyone will change their profession as I did, but the power of volunteering is very real.

Still, oftentimes, the greatest barrier to being a volunteer is incorporating an activity into daily routines. A few of my favorite tips follow:

• Make volunteering a family activity and incorporate it as a monthly outing like a movie night.
• Swap a weekly workout with a volunteer activity.
• Take on small projects that can be done at your own pace from home, like assembling care packages for women's shelters or homeless shelters.
• Pair things you love to do with ways to help others: if you love technology, teach iPhone 101 at a senior center READ MORE AT SUN CITY WEST INDEPENDENT

SPRINGFIELD – Workers in Illinois who participate in the Secure Choice retirement savings program have set aside more than $90 million of their own money for their retirement, Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs said today.

The accomplishment signals a growing recognition that workers understand Social Security will not provide enough income after their working days are over and reflects data that shows workers are more likely to save for retirement if they can do so through workplace payroll deductions.

“While each person has their own American dream, each dream includes a retirement with dignity and confidence,” Frerichs said. “Secure Choice can help accomplish both.”

The Illinois General Assembly created Secure Choice in 2015 and declared employers must either offer a retirement savings program or participate in Secure Choice. In doing so, lawmakers assured employers they would not be responsible for investment decisions and barred them from contributing to a worker’s account. Lawmakers also assured workers that their accounts would travel with them if they changed employers.

Lawmakers also created a seven-member board to oversee the program; determined that investments would be managed by the private sector; and assigned implementation of the savings program to the Illinois State Treasurer’s Office. Based on recommendations from the board, and with consultations with lawmakers, the program launched in 2018.

Today, 109,000 workers, many of whom never thought they could save for retirement, have worked with 7,400 employers to set aside $91 million.

Enrollment was apportioned by employer size so as not to overwhelm employers. Wave one in 2018 included employers with 500 or more employees. Wave two in 2019 included employers with 100-499 employees and another wave that same year included employers with 25-99 employees. The deadline for wave four, employers with 16 or more employees, was Nov. 1, 2022. The deadline for wave five, employers with five or more employees, is Nov. 1, 2023. Eligible employers can register or report an exemption at www.ilsecurechoice.com any time before their applicable deadline.

Secure Choice is critical because 40 percent of Illinois’ private-sector workers do not have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan and 23 percent of retirees rely upon Social Security for 90 percent of their retirement income. The employer component is key because workers are 15 times more likely to save for retirement if they can do so through payroll deductions, according to an AARP study.

The default option for program participants is to enroll in a target-date Roth IRA with a five percent contribution rate. Participants can choose to change their contribution level or fund option at any time. Accounts are owned by individual participants and are portable from job-to-job. Investments are held in a separate trust outside the Illinois Treasury.

“This is a program that’s easy to implement and anything I can do to help my employees both professionally and personally is a win-win.” said Keely Selko, Office Manager at the Dearborn in Chicago, an early Secure Choice participating employer.

About the Illinois Treasurer

As Illinois State Treasurer, Michael Frerichs (FRAIR'-iks) is the state’s Chief Investment and Banking Officer and actively manages approximately $52 billion. The portfolio includes $26 billion in state funds, $17 billion in retirement and college savings plans and $9 billion on behalf of local and state governments. Frerichs’ office protects consumers by safeguarding more than $3.5 billion in unclaimed property, encouraging savings plans for college or trade school, increasing financial education among all ages, assisting people with disabilities to save without losing government benefits, and removing barriers to a secure retirement. The Treasurer’s Office predates Illinois incorporation in 1818. Voters in 1848 chose to make it an elected office.

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Inflation and rising interest rates will affect the South Florida real estate market in 2023, but it will still remain strong thanks in part to foreign buyers, mainly from Latin America, who were number one in 2022, according to specialists consulted by EFE. READ MORE AT EL AMERICAN

Jobs in STEM and media employ the least amount of Hispanic and Latinx workers, according to Credito en USA, a Spanish language personal finance insights platform. The company analyzed the 2021 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in order to identify the most underrepresented job titles for Hispanic and Latinx talent.

Biological scientists have the least amount of representation, as Hispanic and Latinx workers make up only 2.4% of the industry's workforce. Medical scientists, veterinarians and industrial engineers are also underrepresented fields, with Hispanic and Latinx workers making up just under 5% of the industries' overall workforce. READ MORE AT EBN

The market for luxury brands is rapidly changing with a boom in the Hispanic consumer market, the fastest-growing demographic of households with incomes of $150k+, according to two new studies.

The rapidly rising affluence of Hispanics, their greater representation compared to other ethnicities in the top two quintiles, and the fact they are the fastest growing ethnicity bar none means they are an increasingly important demographic for brands to understand. READ MORE AT FORBES

A new study finds Latina workers earn just over half what their white, male counterparts do. The study from the National Women's Law Center found that in 2021, Latinas working full time earned just 57 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.

The study provides a breakdown by community of national origin. It finds that Spanish and Argentinian women earned the most on average at 82 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. Honduran women earned the least at just 44 cents on the dollar. READ MORE AT HOUSTON PUBLIC MEDIA

Hispanic enrollment at postsecondary institutions in the United States has seen an exponential increase over the last few decades, rising from 1.5 million in 2000 to a new high of 3.8 million in 2019 – partly reflecting the group’s rapid growth as a share of the overall U.S. population. 

The decline for Hispanics, and other racial and ethnic groups, in 2020 was driven by a drop in enrollment at two-year institutions. Hispanic enrollment at two-year colleges declined by about 230,000, or 15%, from 2019 to 2020. READ MORE AT PEW RESEARCH CENTER

Latinos account for the fastest-growing portion of US GDP. So much so, that if we considered US Latinos as their own country, it would be third only to the GDP growth rate of China and India in the past decade.1 At a time of economic uncertainty with concerns about a possible recession growing, consumers are looking for additional support.

Latinos are conscious of their impact, choosing brands that value the environment and their employees, all of which makes them more influential than their income levels would suggest. READ MORE AT MCKINSEY.COM

Even before Claire Risoli decided to open up her own restaurant, she knew she would call it Pocha. “Pocha was something that I was called growing up that I hated,” she said. “It means Americanized Mexican girl, and for me, it always made me feel like I wasn’t enough.”

Latinos like Risoli account for 52% of all new employer businesses, according to the 2022 Latino Donor Collaborative U.S. Latino GDP report. The study also measured U.S. Latinos’ contributions to the economy known as the gross domestic product and found that it was worth $2.8 trillion in 2020. READ MORE AT SPECTRUM NEWS 1

The total economic output of Latinos across the U.S. was nearly $2.8 trillion in 2020, or more than 13% of the country’s GDP. Latino GDP was highest in the finance and real estate sector, which represented $460 billion of the total.As a group, however, the most significant data point in the report is what Latinos spend annually. In 2020, personal consumption accounted for nearly $14.1 trillion of the nation’s GDP and U.S. Latinos represented $1.84 trillion of that total.

Latino spending is greater than the economies of Canada or South Korea. Or in national terms, Latinos’ consumption rivals the entire economies of New York or Texas. READ MORE AT KEARNEY HUB

Only about 25% of Latinos say they feel fully included at their workplaces, according to a new report from Bain & Company, a management consulting firm. Why does it matter? Latinos accounted for around 80% of workforce growth from 2010 to 2017, the fastest growing demographic. Seventy percent of Latino workers say inclusion is a critical factor when evaluating prospective employers, the study found. READ MORE AT AXIOS

Seven out of 10 Americans attribute the country’s economic growth to Latino population growth, reflecting that U.S. Hispanics have the highest workforce contribution rate (65.6 percent) and have started the most small businesses out of any other population group over the last decade.

There are significant areas where misconceptions about the Latino workforce can be corrected:

• More than 75 percent of Americans believe Latino immigrants have a lot to offer this country and are an economic boost (Asian, 87 percent; Black, 85 percent; White, 76 percent).
• Many non-Latinos also believe undocumented immigrants are taking jobs Americans depend on (Asian, 55 percent; White, 53 percent; Black, 49 percent), though undocumented immigrants make up only 13 percent of all Latinos in the United States.
• The view that Latinos are farmworkers is prevalent, even among Latinos, who believe half of Latinos fit that description. A commonly held misperception is that “farmworker” describes more Latinos than “entrepreneurial or business-minded,” despite U.S. Latinos creating the most small businesses in the country over the last 10 years. READ MORE AT LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL

Latino-owned companies are growing at record rates and have a plethora of support to tap into. However, securing funding remains a challenge. There are an estimated 4.65 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the US, making them the fastest-growing segment of small businesses in the nation. According to the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI), a research and education collaboration between Stanford University and the Latino Business Action Network, over the last 10 years, the number of Latino-owned businesses in the US has grown 44% compared to just 4% for all others. READ MORE AT THE NEW JERSEY BUSINESS MAGAZINE

More than two-thirds of young adults in the United States live close to the homes they grew up in, a new Census Bureau and Harvard University study found, with Latinos, Black people and those from low-income families who left home only moving a short distance away. Economic opportunities for Hispanic and Black young adults, as well as those from low-income families, are closer to home, because those groups are less likely to move farther away. READ MORE AT NBC NEWS

Latinos make solid and consistent contributions to Illinois’ population and labor force.

Were it not for Latinos, the state’s population and workforce would have contracted. The group contributed more than $97 billion to Chicago’s economy from 2010-2018, according to the recently released 2022 Chicago Metro Latino GDP Report. READ MORE AT CHICAGO REPORTER

Data presented in Telemundo's "Latinas Powering Forward" report indicate that the population of Latinas under the age of 40 has grown 55% in the last 20 years.

Of the 29 million Latina women in the USA, 65% are under 40 years old. These new generations have chosen to prioritize their education and professional development. READ MORE AT NEWSWIRES

The diverse and growing Hispanic and Latino community in the United States accounts for about 18 percent of the overall population and is projected to comprise the majority of net new workers this decade. Most analysis of this community does not account for its rich diversity—largely due to data limitations or a lack of cultural understanding. READ MORE AT CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS

Women of all races who worked full time, year-round in 2020 were paid on average just 83 cents for every dollar paid to men, according to a National Women's Law Center report released ahead of Equal Pay Day on Tuesday. The symbolic day marks how far into the year most women must work to earn what men were paid in the previous year.

“It seems like it’s just a few pennies on the dollar, but it adds up,” Jasmine Tucker, the report’s author, told NBC News. “But Latinas in particular face some of the largest wage gaps.” Latinas only earn 57 cents for every dollar paid to a non-Hispanic man — meaning they have to work at least 21 months, nearly two years, to match a white man’s yearly income. READ MORE AT NBCNEWS