Interesting Statistics from the Migrant Policy Institute
By Susan M. Thornton, MS
The latest statistics from the Migrant Policy Institute contain a number of interesting findings. Among those:
- Immigrants play a growing role in the U.S. labor force. In 1970, the foreign born accounted for 5 percent of the civilian labor force, with this share rising to 17 percent in 2022. While U.S. population growth has slowed in recent years, 65 percent of the total population increase between 2021 and 2022 was due to immigration.
- In 2022, at the state level, the largest numbers of immigrants lived in California (10.4 million), Texas (5.2 million), Florida (4.8 million), New York (4.5 million) and New Jersey (2.2 million) as of 2022. Florida gained the most immigrants between 2010 and 2022 (1.2 million), but North Dakota saw the largest relative increase in the foreign-born population during that period, with a 131 percent increase.
- Regardless of nativity, Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language at home, after English. Other top languages included Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Arabic and French.
Statistics specific to Colorado show that 9.5 percent of people in the state were foreign-born. Of those, 25.5 percent were White, 8.1 percent were Black and 49.2 percent were Latino. Another 10.2 percent were Asian.
In 2022, the average family size among the foreign-born in Colorado was 3.56, and the median age was 43.9%.
