By Barry Flynn
Sentinel Staff Writer

Hispanic immigrants took a disproportionately large share of new U.S. jobs last year, but the gains were concentrated among the most recent arrivals and men, especially construction workers, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

"The labor market is showing clear demand for Latino immigrants, but other segments of the Latino population are not faring as well," Roberto Suro, director of the center, said in a statement released with the report.

Take Bill Rivera, a native New Yorker, former city police officer there and 2002 law school graduate. He has been looking unsuccessfully for a job in Orlando since last June.

At Rivera's higher end of the job scale, it has not been easy to find work. And he said his Hispanic background can be a "double-edged sword."

On the one hand, Rivera's fluency in Spanish can give him an edge, especially in cities such as Orlando, with a large population of Spanish speakers. Even so, his language skills have yet to provide the push he has needed.

Meanwhile, there is a possibility his Spanish surname works against him, he said.

"People's perceptions of other people are very subtle," he said. "Some people are surprised that I am articulate."

On the low end of the local labor market, Tirso Moreno, general coordinator of the Farmworker Association of Florida, disputed the Pew center's findings of improvements for even the most recent immigrants.

Most of the 400,000 Hispanic farmworkers in Florida are "undocumented," or illegal immigrants, and therefore less likely than other people to show up in the government statistics used in the Pew center's analysis, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Pew center, Margarita Studemeister, said she could not provide figures for Florida. But she said the Pew study was a picture of national employment trends last year.

There were twice as many Hispanics added to the nation's job rolls last year as in 2002, the report said. But the construction industry accounted for more than half of those new jobs held by Latinos.

Despite overall gains in the number of jobs and a decline in the unemployment rate among all Hispanics, Latinos' wages were stagnant in 2003, the report said.

The Pew Hispanic Center is a venture of the University of Southern California designed to conduct nonpartisan research aimed at "improving understanding of the Hispanic population."

Barry Flynn can be reached at bflynn@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5240.
 

Copyright © 2004