Latino businesses are thriving in Los Angeles, report finds 

The Latino business sector in Los Angeles has grown so much that if it were its state, its Gross Domestic Product would be larger than the GDP of Louisiana or Oregon, a study found. 

A preview of the study, which is expected to be released on September 8, was conducted by two local university-affiliated research organizations and was funded by the Bank of America Charitable Foundation.

Titled “2022 Los Angeles Metro Latino GDP,” the study will be the first of its kind for Los Angeles. It solely focuses on the size, growth, and patterns of the local Latino market and the educational attainment of the Latino community.  

The study found that between 2010 and 2018, the number of individuals in Los Angeles that received a bachelor’s degree or higher grew 2.6 times faster for Latinos than non-Latinos. Similarly, the labor participation rate was an average of 4.3 percentage points higher for Latinos than non-Latinos. 

The local president of business banking at Bank of America, Raul Anaya, says the study will hopefully help validate what he believes is already true of the Los Angeles Latino business community: the Los Angeles Latino community is driving household formation, home purchases, and small business formation in the city.  

“These trends around growth, around wealth accumulation, around home ownership, around the formation of businesses by the Latino community, I think is something that Bank of America has always recognized for many, many years,” Anaya said.

Latinos make up an estimated 45% of the population of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, defined as the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Anaheim areas, and 48% of the county. With around 6 million Latino residents, the Latino community in Los Angeles is larger than in any other U.S. City, according to 2018 data. 

The report adds that Latino GDP contribution to the Los Angeles metro area that year was $285 billion, larger than the economy of entire states, such as Louisiana, Oregon, and Connecticut. 

“The key industry sectors here in L.A. that drive this growth is around retail, transportation, and hospitality,” Anaya said. “Given that the size of L.A. County is more than 10 million people, knowing that the Latino community is such an important part of the growth of our Greater L.A. economy, it’s important that we have a diverse economy so that it can weather the typical economic swings that happen in any given region.

“When you coupled the diversity of the industries with how (Latinos) are starting businesses at a faster rate, how they are accumulating wealth at a very fast rate, it bodes well for the overall growth and resiliency of the Southern California region. It’s an economic powerhouse.”