Latino population is 'strikingly diverse, relatively young, mostly US-born,' Pew says

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Latinos accounted for over half of total U.S. population growth from 2000-2024, according to a new Pew Research Center report.
Pew reports that 79% of Latinos as of 2024 were U.S. citizens, around 13% of the total representing naturalized immigrants.
Immigration drove Latino growth post-2021, but that may change due to President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.

WASHINGTON — Latinos accounted for more than half of the total growth in the U.S. population between 2000 and 2024, and they are the second-largest racial or ethnic group in the country behind non-Hispanic whites.

The population, though, is hardly homogenous, and new Pew Research Center figures offer a complex, nuanced look at the Hispanic population, increasingly under the microscope amid the ongoing crackdown on illegal immigration, much of it focused on the Latino community. Among other takeaways, nearly 80% of Latinos — including naturalized immigrants and those born here — are U.S. citizens.

The Latino population is "strikingly diverse, relatively young, mostly U.S.-born and increasingly dispersed across the country," Pew, a Washington-based research organization, said in its report, released last week.

At the same time, the numbers crunched by Pew show that while births motored Latino population growth after 2000, immigration — legal and illegal — has emerged as the key growth factor since 2021, as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, though that may change. "The arrival of large numbers of immigrants from Latin America in 2023 and 2024 led to Hispanic population increases of almost 2 million annually, the largest yearly increases on record," reads the report.

Amid the intense crackdown on illegal immigration under President Donald Trump, the country's burgeoning Latino population has come under intense scrutiny, at least by some. Of the estimated 51.3 million immigrants in the country as of 2023, around 15.3% of the total U.S. population that year, more than half, 26.7 million people, were born in Latin America, Pew reported last August.

However, a declining share of Hispanics — also factoring in those born in the country — are immigrants: 40% of the total as of 2000, down to 32% in 2021 and 33% as of 2024, according to Pew's new analysis. In fact, in 2024, 79% of all Latinos in the country were U.S. citizens, including those born here and immigrants who have gone through the naturalization process, up from 71% in 2000.

The number of Latinos in the country illegally as of 2023, meanwhile, totals around 9.3 million, 41% of the Latino immigrant population, according to Pew. That represents around 66% of the estimated 14 million immigrants in the United States illegally from all countries.

Separately, the Migration Policy Institute, in its own fact sheet issued this month, put the total number of "unauthorized immigrants" in the United States from whatever country at 13.74 million as of mid-2023. Of that, the group estimates, 84%, or roughly 11.5 million, came from Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America.

In Utah alone, the Migration Policy Institute estimates there are 138,000 "unauthorized" immigrants, its preferred terminology, nearly half from Mexico and 74% from Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Colombia and El Salvador.

Here is more data:

The Latino population, regardless of migratory status, grew to nearly 68 million as of 2024, up 35.3 million from 32.7 million as of 2000. The group's growth accounted for about 56% of total U.S. population growth in the period of 58.69 million. "Today, Latinos are the country's second-largest racial or ethnic group, making up 1 in 5 Americans," Pew said.
Of that 68 million total, 45.4 million were U.S. born, 8.6 million were immigrants who have become naturalized U.S. citizens and 14.1 million were non-U.S. citizen immigrants, which includes immigrants in the country both legally and illegally. As of 2023, Pew estimated that Latinos in the country illegally represented 14% of the group's total U.S. population.
While immigration from 2021-2024, both legal and illegal, was the main motor to Latino population growth, Pew expects that to change due to the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration. "Preliminary data suggests that births will likely exceed the number of newly arriving immigrants," Pew said.
The median age of Latinos in the United States, 31.2-years-old, is younger than the comparable figures for Black people, 36.2; Asian people, 39; and white people, 43.2. That suggests that as years pass and older generations die, the Latino share of the population will rise.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.