Key takeaways:
- Across California, 59% of Latinas participate in the workforce.
- Latinas tend to get paid less than other women of color, white women and white men in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Ventura counties.
- When Latinas are underpaid, it affects families' ability to access housing, education and health care, and plan for retirement. The consequences of their financial challenges ripple across the entire region.
Latinas in California's Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Ventura counties earn only 47-50 cents for every dollar earned by a non-Hispanic white man, according to a new study.
The analysis, led by UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and Cal State Channel Islands researchers, looked at data from the United States Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey (ACS) and thousands of surveys collected by the researchers, primarily focused on Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Ventura workers aged 18 to 34. The findings were revealed in a series of new, comprehensive research reports highlighting educational access, wage gaps, scheduling and gender inequalities for workers.
"On average, men make more than women. However, hourly earnings are especially low for Latinas, who tend to get paid less than other women of color, white women and white men," said Veronica Terriquez, research author, director of the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC) and co-founder of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, an initiative spearheaded by the CSRC. "This research matters because oftentimes Latinas are unseen, unheard and get concentrated in low-paying jobs. These low wages are a serious problem because unfair wages impact entire communities."
Focusing on the Latina experience is essential to documenting their livelihoods because across California, 59% of Latinas participate in the workforce. Latinas have also historically been left out of research studies, creating knowledge gaps for legislators and other officials in charge of making and amending laws for all California residents, Terriquez said.
Santa Barbara and Ventura counties
Terriquez and Jeannette Ciudad-Real, an undergraduate student researcher at the CSRC, found that in 2023, Latinas represented 46% of the female civilian labor force in Santa Barbara County, compared to 43% of non-Hispanic white women. In Ventura County, Latinas represented 42% of the female civilian labor force, compared to 43% non-Hispanic white women.
Despite the high percentages of Latinas in these labor forces, they earned 50 cents for every dollar a non-Hispanic white man earned in the Ventura area, and 47 cents in Santa Barbara.
"Differences in educational attainment and occupational status explain part of the wage gap. When compared to white residents, Latinos and Latinas tend to have poorer access to high-quality K-12 education and universities and colleges that grant bachelor's degrees," the researchers wrote in their report. "Additionally, gender discrimination and stereotyping play a part in defining career paths and contribute to lower pay for Latinas relative to men even within the same occupational categories."
Read all of the Santa Barbara and Ventura County reports here.
Santa Cruz County findings
Terriquez and Sylvanna Falcón, professor in UC Santa Cruz's Department of Latin American and Latino Studies, looked at ACS data from 2019-2023 that analyzed Latinas' participation in the civilian labor force and their hourly earnings in Santa Cruz County. They found that Latinas earned 50 cents for every dollar a non-Hispanic white man earned. Latinas also made up approximately 34% of the female civilian labor force in Santa Cruz County, compared to 55% non-Hispanic white women.
"Many Latinas are the primary earners in their households, and they contribute significantly as taxpayers and community members. When they are underpaid, the impact extends beyond individual workers, affecting families' ability to access housing, education and health care and to plan for retirement," the authors wrote in their analysis. "The consequences of their financial challenges ripple across the entire region."
Read all Santa Cruz County reports here.
Findings and recommendations
Among the researchers' recommendations are comprehensive policy solutions that include reducing occupational segregation, expanding support for family care, creating pathways to citizenship and strengthening protections against workplace discrimination.
Santa Barbara, Ventura and Santa Cruz's civic and business leadership can play a role in advancing fair and equitable wages for Latinas and all other workers, Terriquez and Falcón said.
This research is part of the Latina Futures 2050 Lab, spearheaded by the CSRC in partnership with the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute (LPPI) ; the UCLA Labor Center 's Prosperity, Opportunity and Worker Equity Reimagined in Workforce Development team; the Center for Labor and Community and the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas , both housed at UC Santa Cruz; and Cal State Channel Islands .
