Lisa Labuz: Massive worker shortages over the past year have been attributed to the great resignation. But here in Illinois, the Latino labor force continued working essential jobs during the pandemic despite health risks and low wages. A new report from Metropolitan Planning Council and the Latino Policy Forum offers a glimpse at some challenges facing Latino workers. And it's called a great resignation not due to Latinos. And I'm joined now by Silvia Puente, who is President and CEO of the Latino Policy Forum and the report's co-author. Welcome Sylvia.

Sylvia Puente: Good to talk to you Lisa.

Lisa Labuz: So I want to start with Latinos in the workforce. How were Latino workers hit by the pandemic?

Sylvia Puente: It is an interesting story because at the beginning of the pandemic, we did see a decrease in labor force participation, given the number of Latinos that were working in the hospitality industry, for example, and we know that restaurants and hotels closed. And I think that was true for a lot of workers. But what made the Latino workforce distinct is Latinos work in jobs that had the least ability to be able to work from home. Right? So that as we began to open up again, what we saw is the number of Latino workers who were essential workers, who also continued to work through the pandemic. So while there was an initial hit at the beginning, we know because Latinos weren't able to work from home - Latinos were essentially the essential workforce in manufacturing, in COVID cleanup, in a lot of the jobs that we needed to do that we need to keep the economy running.

Lisa Labuz: So now a section of this report that you've co authored looked specifically at unique challenge that face Latino workers, particularly Latino workers in childcare.

Sylvia Puente: So what we know is that Latinas are about 16% of all women in the workforce and they are the group that is projected to grow at the highest rate. And that's largely because of just demographic growth, because the Latino population continues to grow in the state, while other populations have not grown over the past decade. And what we found in doing this analysis is that there were a good number of Latinos that said, "I want to work, but I don't have access to childcare," and childcare is one of the key impediments we know and key necessities for women to be in the workforce period. And we saw that a disproportionate amount of Latinas did not have access to child care. So that kept them from being in the workforce. We also know that there's a significant number of Latinas who are child care workers. And that's a whole other issue because we know that for all childcare workers, whether Latina or not, wages are very low and often difficult to support a family on.

Lisa Labuz: What is the domino effect of labor and wage issues for these workers?

Sylvia Puente: Yeah, the the Domino effect is that we have high concentrations of Latinos and low-wage jobs. Jobs that often don't have regular hours, may not be full time, don't come with health benefits. And that really then leads to the significant portion of Latino workers that don't earn a living wage. That don't earn over $15 an hour. And that of course leads to - how do you support a family when wages are low? How do you go back to school to get further education, to improve your economic mobility and potential ability to get a better job when you are barely making ends meet? And what we do see is that across the nation, about 50% of Latinos who work are working in jobs to pay $15 an hour or less. So one of the things the report calls for is that there's a real need to think about what can we do to proactively provide workforce training and pursue better quality jobs, enabling Latinos to have access to better quality jobs and the skills and education they need to get better quality jobs.

Lisa Labuz: Right. It's all connected. All connected. Alright. Sylvia Puente is President and CEO of the Latino Policy Forum. Thank you so much for joining us Sylvia.

Sylvia Puente: Thanks so much for taking the time.

Lisa Labuz: This is WBEZ.

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