Federal and state government employs 22 million people and directs trillions in spending. Latinos are 20.0% of the workforce, but supervisory, policy, and leadership roles consistently run 7–15%. The gap between who pays taxes and who shapes how they're spent is not a pipeline problem. It is a structural one.
| Occupation | Latino % · green line = 20.0% workforce benchmark | Gap vs. benchmark | Total employed | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-line supervisors of correctional officers | 7.7% | -12.3pp | 50K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Postal service clerks | 10.9% | -9.1pp | 96K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Firefighters | 11.3% | -8.7pp | 352K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Social and community service managers | 12.6% | -7.4pp | 471K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Mail clerks and mail machine operators, except postal service | 13.6% | -6.4pp | 63K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Other community and social service specialists | 13.7% | -6.3pp | 121K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Compliance officers | 13.9% | -6.1pp | 312K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Community and social service occupations | 14.7% | -5.3pp | 2,846K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Postal service mail carriers | 14.7% | -5.3pp | 371K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Detectives and criminal investigators | 15.3% | -4.7pp | 155K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Correctional officers and jailers | 15.6% | -4.4pp | 296K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Postal service mail sorters, processors, and processing machine operators | 16.1% | -3.9pp | 52K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Private detectives and investigators | 18.2% | -1.8pp | 154K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Social workers, all other | 18.6% | -1.4pp | 596K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| First-line supervisors of police and detectives | 19.7% | -0.3pp | 107K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Probation officers and correctional treatment specialists | 20.6% | +0.6pp | 67K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Eligibility interviewers, government programs | 20.9% | +0.9pp | 90K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Child, family, and school social workers | 21.3% | +1.3pp | 83K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Police officers | 24.2% | +4.2pp | 705K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
| Dispatchers, except police, fire, and ambulance | 24.7% | +4.7pp | 180K | BLS CPS Table 11, 2025 annual avg |
Benchmark: 20.0% = 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 20.0% national workforce benchmark.
Data & Methodology
These tables are the BLS Current Population Survey, in which people report their own occupation. Elsewhere on this site we cite the profession registries (AAMC for physicians, ABA for attorneys, LCDA for board seats), which count licensed members of a profession. The two disagree, and we show both rather than pick the flattering one: the CPS puts Latino lawyers at 9.2%, while the ABA, counting licensed attorneys, puts them at 6.0%. Where the two differ, the figure we stand behind and cite is the registry.
The parity line is 20.0%, the Latino share of everyone employed in America (BLS CPS 2025, Table 11). Occupations employing fewer than 150,000 people carry wide sampling error and are never used as a headline figure here.
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 % − 20.0% 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.