HMONG POPULATION RESEARCH PROJECT
Employment Status
Population
Distribution | Average Year of Entry | Educational
Attainment | Income Distribution
Housing Variables |
Employment Status | Linguistic Isolation
| Occupational Distribution
Hmong immigrants who had recently arrived to the U. S. had difficulty finding jobs. Our employment status data are taken from the 1990 Census and are based on persons who are age 16 or older. According to our calculations, the unemployment rate of the Hmong population was 20% in California, 15% in Minnesota, and 27% in Wisconsin in 1990. The unemployment rate for the general population of California was 6.6%, 5% in Minnesota and 5% in Wisconsin. The unemployment rate suggests that the Hmong American population in Minnesota was doing economically better than Hmong Americans in California and Wisconsin, although the unemployment rate in Minnesota was still very high in comparison to the general population in all three states.
We calculated the unemployment rate for the Hmong communities in different counties by dividing the number of unemployed from the Hmong population with the total number of Hmong in the labor force. Many Hmong communities had very high unemployment rates, some as high as 54%. The following table compares the Hmong unemployment data to the general population unemployment data. Counties are ranked by their unemployment rates in decreasing order.
Counties |
Hmong Unemployment |
General Population Unemployment |
|
California |
20.4% |
6.6% |
|
Minnesota |
15.0% |
5.1% |
|
Wisconsin |
27.4% |
5.2% |
|
Eau Claire County, WI |
54.8% |
6.3% |
|
Stanislaus County, CA |
50.0% |
10.0% |
|
Winnebago County, WI |
38.0% |
4.3% |
|
San Joaquin County, CA |
33.2% |
8.8% |
|
Dane County, WI |
30.4% |
3.2% |
|
Marathon County, WI |
26.7% |
3.9% |
|
La Crosse County, WI |
26.1% |
4.8% |
|
Milwaukee County, WI |
23.5% |
6.8% |
|
Outagamie County, WI |
21.4% |
4.0% |
|
Santa Barbara County, CA |
20.5% |
5.4% |
|
Sacramento County, CA |
19.6% |
6.3% |
|
Merced County, CA |
18.7% |
10.6% |
|
Sheboygan County, WI |
18.7% |
4.1% |
|
Fresno County, CA |
18.1% |
9.5% |
|
Ramsey County, MN |
16.5% |
4.9% |
|
Tulare County, CA |
15.3% |
10.7% |
|
Butte County, CA |
14.0% |
9.5% |
|
Brown County, WI |
13.5% |
4.6% |
|
Hennepin County, MN |
11.8% |
4.7% |
|
San Diego County, CA |
9.4% |
6.1% |
|
Yuba County, CA |
7.8% |
11.9% |
|
Orange County, CA |
5.6% |
4.8% |
|
Manitowoc County, WI |
0.0% |
5.0% |
Population
Distribution | Average Year of Entry | Educational
Attainment | Income Distribution
Housing Variables | Employment Status | Linguistic Isolation | Occupational Distribution
The Data
[Economics Department Homepage]
Maintained by: Dr.
Wayne Carroll, Tua Lor, Elina
Camane
Contact: The Economics Hmong Research
Team
Last Updated: November 2000