The Latino population in the United States has nearly doubled over the past 25 years and much of that growth is happening far beyond the Southwest.
A new Pew Research Center analysis, released Oct. 22, shows that U.S. Hispanics now make up almost 20 percent of the U.S. population, compared with 13 percent in 2000. While California and Texas still anchor the largest Latino communities, states across the Midwest and South are driving new waves of growth.
“They are also strikingly diverse, relatively young, mostly U.S. born and increasingly dispersed across the country,” states the article.
Pew estimates the U.S. Latino population at 68 million in 2024, an increase of more than 53.5 million since 1980. Latinos now account for nearly one in five Americans. The report notes that population growth has slowed in recent years, yet Latinos remain one of the nation’s youngest racial and ethnic groups.
The median age for Latinos is 30, the youngest of any major racial or ethnic group in the country, with 67 percent of Latinos being U.S.-born citizens. That generational change shows how the community’s expansion is now driven more by U.S.-born children and grandchildren than by new immigration.
Florida (6.7 million), New York (4.0 million) and Illinois (2.5 million) round out the five states with the largest Latino populations, while New Mexico stands out with Hispanics making up nearly half of its residents.
Pew also connects the recent rise in Latino numbers to a broader influx of migrants.
“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,” the report says.
That surge reflects both heightened migration from countries such as Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia.
Latinos trace their roots to many countries across Latin America and Spain, but a few groups make up most of the U.S. population. People of Mexican heritage remain the largest group, totaling about 40 million, or 57 percent, of all U.S. Hispanics in 2024.
Puerto Ricans (6.1 million) are the next largest group, followed by Cubans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Hondurans, Venezuelans and Ecuadorians, each topping 1 million. Venezuelans grew the fastest between 2019 and 2024, more than doubling in number, while growth among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans slowed to about 5 percent.
Pew’s analysis shows that Latino growth has become a national story, with Latinos now making a growing share of residents in nearly every region of the United States.
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