Some Hispanic men are defining college differently. Ponjuán told the story of a Corpus Christi man in his 40s who earned a commercial driver’s license certificate to get a better job and therefore considered himself a college graduate; he told Ponjuán he could now show his son the value of college education.
But Ponjuán warned that some jobs with high concentrations of Latinos become harder to do in middle age.
“Latino men are checking out because they are the labor force for a lot of these jobs that require manual labor and blue-collar workers,” Ponjuán said. “Young men enter these careers, and by the time they reach 34, 35, their bodies give out and they are no longer able to go into management, because they don’t have a degree or they don’t have the skill sets.”
The median age of Hispanic men is 30.6, while the median age for the general population is 38.1.
Hispanic men work in some of the most dangerous jobs, mostly in transportation and construction, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The most recent census of fatal occupational injuries issued by BLS showed Latino workers were 30% more likely to suffer a fatal injury on the job than other workers overall.
Jun Garza, 43, who was born and raised in San Antonio, is part owner of a small construction and remodeling business there. He didn’t finish high school and was on his own at 15. But he had skills in various trades he learned from his father and uncle, who often used him for jobs because “I was a hard worker.”
He recently injured himself falling off a ladder while trimming a tree at his home. A light bulb went off that “this is not something I’ll be able to do my whole life,” he said; the work has already taken a toll on his body. “I’m not super old, but I will be older, and when I’m too old, they may not want to hire me.”
Garza is now earning his GED and hopes to earn a construction manager certification through community college.
Like Garza, some Hispanic men are using their blue-collar skills to start their own contracting, landscaping, restaurant and other businesses.
“Latinos are starting small businesses out of necessity,” said Juan Proaño, an entrepreneur and the CEO of League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest Latino advocacy group. “When they can’t find a job to support their families, they venture out to start one. The problem is they have to finance to grow that business to scale. While there are a lot of Latino startups, there are not a lot of scalable businesses, businesses that banks would invest in.”
A greater share of Latino male-owned businesses, 21%, are generating $1 million or more in annual revenue than Latina-owned businesses, at 14%. But 31% of white male-owned businesses are generating that level of revenue, according to the State of Latino Entrepreneurship Report, produced by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Although he lacks health insurance, Garza said what he would most like the next administration to do is help small-business owners like him know what’s available to reduce costs, such as tax deductions — just like big businesses know how to do.
Latinos overall have made gains in health insurance coverage, homeownership and inflation-adjusted wages under the Biden administration. But one of this year’s election takeaways is that those gains weren’t enough to overcome frustrations, especially among Latino men, about high costs and the impact on their families. Their votes in future elections will likely rest on whether they feel the “American dream” is proving true for them.
“It’s abundant and clear to me that they need to see they are valued as a workforce, that they are invested in as a workforce,” Ponjuán said, “that they are given the infrastructure for that success to happen.”
