Compiled By NAN Business Editor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. June 3, 2016: It’s the 10th birthday of National Caribbean American Heritage Month in the United States, but don’t look for any spotlight on this community on major news networks! You won’t see it simply because the Caribbean Diaspora in the U.S. has done a poor job of really selling and counting itself and telling its true economic story – hampered of course by Census data that fail to allow nationals from this region to accurately self-identify. But here are 10 economic fast facts on this group based on conservative economic data from the U.S. Census compiled by News Americas Now:
1: There are an estimated 3.5 million immigrants from the Caribbean living across the U.S. who account for 9 percent of the total foreign-born population and 6 million self-identified members of the Caribbean Diaspora residing in the United States.
2: The predominant ancestral Caribbean groups in the U.S. are Jamaican, Haitians, Trinidadian and Tobagonians, Guyanese, Barbadians, Bahamians, U.S. Virgin Islanders, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans. Jamaicans and Haitians make up the top percentage of foreign born blacks in the U.S.
3: Most Caribbean immigrants or those of Caribbean ancestry are living in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Baltimore and California. One-third of Caribbean immigrants resided in the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA metropolitan area. Nearly four of every ten immigrants in Florida were born in the Caribbean.
4: Twenty-one percent of the population is between 45 to 54 years old and over 48 percent are men while fifty-seven percent of the Caribbean population in the U.S. are women.
5: Compared to other immigrant groups, the foreign born from the Caribbean are less likely to be new arrivals, tend to have higher levels of English-language proficiency. Caribbean immigrants were more likely than immigrants overall to have graduated from high school and hold bachelor degrees with over 61 percent enrolled in college or graduate school.
6: Caribbean immigrants as a whole were significantly more likely than some other immigrant groups to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Among the Caribbean foreign born, some 55.4 percent were naturalized U.S. citizens, compared with 43.7 percent of the overall foreign-born population.
7: Over 28 percent have never been married but children in Caribbean immigrant families accounted for 7.8 percent of all children living in immigrant families (i.e. children residing with at least one foreign-born parent).
8: The median annual household income is put at USD$43,800, higher than higher Hispanic immigrants whose income is put at $38,000.
9: Caribbean-born men and women were more likely to participate in the civilian labor force than were native-born men and women. Just 30 percent are in a service occupation including construction, extraction, and transportation occupations; and administrative support positions.
10: Under 20 percent commute to work using public transportation.
