Latino Occupational Representation · Education

The Education Gap

Postsecondary teachers at 7.9%. Elementary school teachers at 9.2%. The pipeline that determines whether a Latino student develops the academic confidence to pursue medicine, law, or engineering is staffed, at its foundational levels, predominantly by teachers who did not grow up inside it. Research shows this has measurable effects.

7.9%
Lowest-represented role
Postsecondary teachers
Source: BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
14.3%
Average Latino share
across 12 occupations
vs. 18.7% U.S. Latino workforce share
75%
Occupations below the
18.7% workforce benchmark
9 of 12 occupations tracked
20.4%
Highest-represented role
Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors
Source: BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
K–12 students are 28% Latino nationally. Elementary and secondary teachers are 9–10% Latino. The representation gap in the classroom is the same gap that compounds into the pipeline gap in professional school twenty years later.
All Occupations, Sorted by Latino Representation (lowest first)
Occupation Latino % · green line = 18.7% workforce benchmark Gap vs. benchmark Total employed Source
Postsecondary teachers
7.9% 		-10.8pp 1,058K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Librarians and media collections specialists
9.0% 		-9.7pp 195K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Secondary school teachers
9.2% 		-9.5pp 790K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Special education teachers
12.2% 		-6.5pp 349K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Elementary and middle school teachers
12.8% 		-5.9pp 3,511K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Tutors
14.3% 		-4.4pp 165K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Other teachers and instructors
14.3% 		-4.4pp 1,018K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Counselors, all other
15.9% 		-2.8pp 257K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Bus drivers, school
17.5% 		-1.2pp 210K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Preschool and kindergarten teachers
18.7% 		+0.0pp 644K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Educational, guidance, and career counselors and advisors
19.1% 		+0.4pp 348K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg
Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors
20.4% 		+1.7pp 164K BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg

Benchmark: 18.7% = U.S. Latino share of civilian labor force (BLS CPS 2025 annual average). California benchmark: 40.3% (CA Latino population share, 2020 Census). The green vertical line in each bar marks the 18.7% national workforce benchmark.

Your part in Education
The classroom is where the pipeline begins or ends. Your part: be counted, teach and counsel the students coming up, and insist that the faculty hired to teach a heavily Latino student body reflects it.
See your field's number and be counted →
See how this connects to the full story, across all industries, over time.
See the concordance between teacher and student representation →

Data & Methodology

Occupation data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey (CPS) Table 11, 2025 annual average. "Latino" = "Hispanic or Latino" per BLS CPS coding. All figures are annual averages of monthly survey estimates; small occupations (<50,000 workers) have higher margin of error.

Silicon Valley Technology figures sourced from cirlabs / Reveal News EEO-1 analysis of large tech employers, 2016 (most recent public EEO-1 release with race × job category × company detail). Internal job classifications differ from BLS CPS categories.

Gap = Latino % − 18.7% U.S. Latino workforce benchmark (BLS CPS 2025). Negative gap = underrepresented relative to workforce share. All data public domain. Script and source: github.com/turnerll/ligazon.