By Cal Lutheran NewsThe 2026 California LatinoGDP Report documents a dramatic economic reality in California: If it weren’t for Latinos, California would have lost its economic edge relative to the broader United States. That’s because the economic contribution of California’s Latinos is growing 2.7 times faster than the contribution of California’s non-Latinos, even as economic growth across the state has slowed in recent years.
“For decades, California’s relatively rapid economic growth versus the U.S. was a foregone conclusion,” said Matthew Fienup, an associate professor of economics and executive director of California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF). From 1997 to 2019, California’s economy grew 57% faster than the nation’s. Since the pandemic, however, the state has fallen behind. From 2019 to 2024, California’s GDP grew 12.6 slower than the U.S. GDP. Without Latinos, that gap would have been more than 37%.
“Without Latinos, California would have fallen well behind the rest of the country,” said Dan Hamilton, a professor of economics and the report’s principal investigator. “But Latinos are such strong drivers of economic growth and such a dependable source of economic resilience that they elevate the entire California economy both nationally and on the global scale.”
The new report helps put the scale of California’s Latino economy into perspective. The 2024 California Latino GDP is $1.07 trillion, or larger than the entire economy of Switzerland. In 2024, the overall California State GDP was $4.05 trillion dollars, representing the fifth-largest GDP in the world, after Japan. Without Latinos, California’s GDP would be only the eighth largest in the world.
The LatinoGDP Project’s reporting also provides an effective tool for examining the contributions of U.S. Latinos, particularly for students during a challenging political moment.
“I use the LatinoGDP reports in my classes, and they really help the students appreciate the value of Latine communities at a time when the current U.S. administration is constantly devaluing not only the contributions of Latinos, but we Latines as people,” said Lorena Muñoz, associate dean of equity, inclusion and belonging at Cal Lutheran.
The report notes the increasingly critical role of California’s Latino population and labor force. Latinos make up 41% of Californians but account for 95% of the state’s population growth since 2010. Since 2010, California’s Latino labor force has grown nearly 20 times faster than the non-Latino labor force.
“It’s not possible to imagine a bright future for California’’s economy without Latinos,” said David Hayes-Bautista, founder of the LatinoGDP Project and Distinguished Professor of medicine at UCLA.
The 2026 report also documents that the number of Latinos with a bachelor’s degree or higher education is growing 3.5 times faster than the number of highly educated non-Latinos. Going forward, institutions like Cal Lutheran have an opportunity to further support Latino students entering higher education.
“This report highlights the value of investing in Latine communities, of opening opportunities for Latine students to gain a higher education degree, as we are top contributors to the social, cultural and economic life of Ventura County, California and the U.S.,” Muñoz said.
This year’s report is the 32nd full-length report produced by the LatinoGDP Project, a collaboration between Community Partners, UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health & Culture and CERF. The body of work analyzes Latino contributions across a wide range of geographies, including the United States, more than a dozen states, as well as targeted metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Miami and New York. The project also produced the inaugural U.S. LatinaGDP Report.
