NEW YORK - After being fired by the restaurant where he worked as a cook for nine years, Ramon Pichardo does menial jobs to get by.
“I’ve looked for a job in many restaurants but they all tell me they don’t need help or they can’t hire me at this moment because business is slow,” said the Dominican immigrant, who shares an apartment with two roommates to afford the $739 monthly rent in Manhattan’s heavily Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights.
From New York to Miami to Los Angeles, the downturn in the U.S. economy is hitting Hispanics especially hard, with unemployment rising faster in that community than in the overall U.S. population. And the slowdown has had a ripple effect, with a significant drop in payments being sent home to families in Latin America.
“For the last year, Hispanics have been losing jobs at a faster rate than any other group,” said Agustine MartÃnez, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington.
The U.S. Hispanic unemployment rate was 7.4 percent in July, compared to 5.7 percent for the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and experts blame the slumps in construction and manufacturing.
Their salaries are also stuck: Median earnings for Hispanics who worked full-time during the first quarter of 2008 were $520 per week and $10.77 per hour. For the overall population, the comparable figures were $719 per week and $12.20 per hour. And the median earnings for Hispanics were nearly the same as last year, when food and gas prices were much lower.
Diana RodrÃguez is another victim of the economic hard times.
The Dominican mother of two lost her job in February as a customer service representative and has been taking temporary jobs since then to be able to afford her $345 monthly rent in a subsidized apartment in the Bronx.
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