Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker delivered remarks at the National Council of La Raza’s Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Secretary Pritzker addressed leaders of the Latino community about her vision for spurring economic opportunity, growth, and competitiveness for the U.S. economy and for all Americans, and she highlighted the vital role played by Hispanic Americans in advancing prosperity across the country.
During her remarks, Secretary Pritzker outlined a path forward for America’s economic leadership, focused on key investments in people, innovation, and infrastructure.
In the fast-changing, global economy of the 21st century, the Secretary discussed the need to better prepare a highly-skilled, technology-driven workforce that matches the needs of businesses today and keeps the United States on the leading edge of competitiveness worldwide. She also addressed the urgent economic necessity and moral obligation of enacting comprehensive immigration reform; the importance of supporting the next generation of successful innovators and entrepreneurs; and the immediate priority of improving both our physical and digital infrastructure.
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery Thank you, Kris, for your introduction. And thank you, Janet, for your leadership of NCLR and for your persistent advocacy on behalf of the entire Latino community in the United States. Janet: you have been a true partner to the President and to our Administration, and I hope you continue to make your voice heard loud and clear on issues of economic opportunity, civil rights, and equality, all of which are vital to the future of our nation. I also want to thank all of NCLR for the chance to speak at your conference.
As Latino leaders, you are American leaders. You represent the interests and ideals of not only Hispanic Americans, but all Americans. You represent the aspirations of every community to advance and benefit from economic opportunity and growth. I am here today to address what we – as leaders, as partners, and as peers – need to do to ensure our country remains on the leading edge of competitiveness in the rapidly-changing economy of the 21st century.
As Secretary of Commerce, my job is to focus on how to create the conditions for economic growth for all American businesses, workers, and families – whether by investing in economic development, promoting U.S. exports abroad, or laying down broadband to connect our neighborhoods to one another and the world. You know better than anyone that the Latino community is an essential part of the fabric of our nation’s economic dynamism. Hispanic Americans have played a vital role in growing the economy for more than a century. Today and in the years to come, your success will remain inextricably tied to the success of our country, but only if we make the right investments and form a strong foundation for long-term prosperity.
As a business person myself, I always look at what the data tells me, and the numbers clearly demonstrate the vital importance of the Latino community to our economic strength. Hispanics comprise 17 percent of our country’s population, fueling half our nation’s growth over the last decade. Latino consumers control nearly $1.5 trillion in purchasing power – up 50 percent since 2010. And that is only going to rise as Latino households earn higher incomes and Latino entrepreneurs start an increasing share of our new businesses. One in five kids in kindergarten today is Hispanic – and the better we educate these students, the better prepared they will be as workers, entrepreneurs, and innovators in a fast-paced global marketplace. Put simply: our businesses and our markets are increasingly shaped by the ideas and contributions of Latinos. To achieve our shared hopes for prosperity and competitiveness, Hispanic Americans must continue to play a central role in driving our economic progress and success.
From day one, President Obama and our Administration have been laser-focused on extending economic opportunity to all Americans. We have advanced policies that ensure our nation achieves rapid, sustained, and broad-based economic growth, from pushing to raise the minimum wage, to expanding overtime pay, to putting affordable, quality health care within reach of every American. As a result of these policies and others, our economy has moved from recession to recovery. Our businesses went from hemorrhaging jobs to the longest stretch of private sector job growth in history. Our workers saw the unemployment rate fall from double-digits to its lowest level in 7 years, with the jobless rate for Latinos dropping from over 10 percent to nearly 6 percent since the President took office. Our families have watched their home values slowly increase once again, while consumer confidence is on the rise.
Yet even with these steps forward, challenges persist. Our economy is growing, but too many households have yet to see the impact in their own lives. Real wages are rising, but too many workers have yet to feel it in their own paychecks. Private sector profits are up, but many companies still confront uncertainty in markets at home and abroad.
Working together, we have made progress. But we have to acknowledge that globalization, advances in technology, and ease of transportation have changed the conditions for economic growth. These factors have fundamentally altered the tools we need to ensure that our nation remains on the cutting edge of competitiveness.
Given these facts on the ground, the question for all of us is: what is our path forward? How do we ensure that we enjoy a dynamic economy that will strengthen middle class families and support those trying to reach the middle class? How do we ensure that we enjoy an economy where prosperity is sustainable and broadly shared? How do we ensure that we enjoy an economy that will spur growth across all communities? America’s prosperity and global competitiveness depends on our ability to make key investments: investments in our people, so we utilize 100 percent of our talent; investments in innovation and creativity, so we remain on the cutting edge; and investments in our infrastructure, so we can move our products and ideas at the speed required in the 21st century.
For all Americans to thrive and succeed, we must invest in our greatest resource: our people. Winning the war for talent is imperative if our country is to out-compete and continue to lead the rest of the world. With today’s rapid pace of innovation and the interconnectedness of markets, there are many paths to a steady career. Traditional professions like law, medicine, education, or finance are well-known paths. But today, industries or sectors of our economy that barely existed a decade or two ago, such as data analytics, cybersecurity, clean energy, 3-D printing, or the sharing economy, have equal or greater potential. And with only a mobile phone in our pocket and access to broadband, any of us can start a business and seek out customers worldwide.
Each of these paths has the potential to lead to greater economic security. But to take advantage of this potential, we must arm our workers and entrepreneurs with the skills to compete. We must provide the opportunity for our workforce to adapt to the fast pace of change brought on by automation, evolving technologies, and new applications, which may displace significant numbers of both blue- and white-collar workers. Recognizing this reality, our path forward must offer Americans a more diverse menu of options for skills development. Whether through apprenticeships, community colleges, universities, graduate schools, or technical education, workforce training – both online and in the classroom – must prepare workers for the fast-changing markets of the 21st century.
To meet this task, for the first time, the Commerce Department has made skills and workforce training a priority. Through our “Skills for Business” initiative, we are working closely with Labor Secretary Tom Perez, non-profits, and the private sector to assure that our worker training programs are better aligned with the jobs in our communities. We can no longer afford to train our people for jobs that are disappearing, and we should not educate our students for the opportunities of past generations. It is imperative that we are prepared for jobs that exist today and will exist in the future.
I know that NCLR recognizes the urgency of this challenge as well. Your Career Pathways Initiative has partnered with community organizations and businesses such as Wal-Mart and UPS to train Latinos for high-wage, high-demand jobs. Thus far, NCLR has implemented its program in a diverse set of industries, including health care, customer service, retail, green jobs, construction, and transportation. You are ensuring that the next generation of Latino workers is prepared to compete and thrive.
To succeed in the global economy, our path forward must ensure that America continues to be a place where anyone can contribute their ideas and abilities to our prosperity. The United States has been built, strengthened, and sustained by generation after generation of immigrants. This remains true today. Advancing permanent, comprehensive immigration reform is not just a moral obligation; it is a matter of economic necessity. If we do not welcome the best and brightest to our shores, if we do not attract the top minds, workers, and innovators to our communities: put simply, we will be left behind. If we want the 21st century to be another American century, we must ensure that the men and women who move here, who study here, who bring their skills here, and who start businesses and families here, stay here.
There are as many as 2 million DREAMers in this country, who are American in every way, except on paper. Every time I meet a DREAMer, I come away moved by their stories, inspired by their potential, and more committed than ever to their cause. They want the chance to change the course of their lives and participate in our economy. They want to be a part of America’s success in the years to come. Yet they too often sit in limbo. The Administration’s 2012 deferred action policy – or DACA – is giving more than 650,000 DREAMers the chance to more fully contribute. But it is only a temporary solution that does not offer a path to the full rights and responsibilities as U.S. citizens. To be frank, we are shooting ourselves in the foot by not allowing all DREAMers to achieve their full potential.
There are also 1.1 million foreign students now studying in the United States, an 85 percent increase in just the last decade. And these potential immigrants make up over 40 percent of Master’s and PhD students in the STEM fields – expertise we desperately need more of in this country. Yet once we train these students, more often than not, we tell them to leave. This makes no sense.
One recent study found that almost half of Fortune 500 companies – including Google, Yahoo, and Home Depot – were founded by immigrants or their children. The founder of the next big thing could be a DREAMer sitting in a local classroom, unable to apply or pay for college; or it could be an international student in one of our great universities, ready to start a company with a visa set to expire next week. This approach is not consistent with our history or our values. We must change course. For the sake of who we are as a country, for the sake of our economic growth and competitiveness, the time for deferrals and delays is over. The time is now to enact comprehensive immigration reform.
Our path forward builds upon one of the cornerstones of our economic dynamism: our innovators and entrepreneurs. Since the founding of our nation, people have applied their ingenuity to develop great ideas into great businesses right here in the United States. The Latino community is significant to that tradition. The number of Latino entrepreneurs has tripled in the last two decades, and Hispanic Americans have opened twice as many businesses as the national average in the last ten years. Given this extraordinary growth among Hispanic Americans, sitting in the audience today could be the next Nina Vaca, an immigrant from Ecuador who became the CEO of the fastest-growing woman-led business in America; or the next Antonio Gracias who founded a leading private equity firm in Chicago.
Both Nina and Antonio are Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship. They volunteer their time to travel around the world to mentor, inspire, and support the next generation of entrepreneurs.
It is innovators like these who drive our prosperity. But our economy will only continue to expand if our entrepreneurs can bring their ideas from lab to market, can access needed capital, and can sell their products in markets around the world. We know that when we set the conditions that allow all Americans to pursue their best ideas, these Americans create leading firms; these Americans enhance our competitiveness; these Americans strengthen our economy; and these Americans create jobs here at home.
Take Victor Quinones, for example. Victor is a native of Reynosa, Mexico, who started Concord Supply, based in San Antonio. The firm primarily manufactures materials that package and protect steel during the shipping process. All of Concord’s products are not only Victor’s own inventions, but are protected by six patents. A few years ago, Victor invented an entirely different material – one that soaks up oil, but not water – and saw the potential to sell it to customers abroad. He reached out to the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency’s center in San Antonio, which connected Concord with partners and investors in Mexico. The company ultimately received a $50 million contract to deploy Victor’s technology and protect Mexican waters in the event of an oil spill. The contract represents a 50 percent increase in revenue and supports more than 100 jobs at Concord Supply.
Victor is an innovator who took his inventions and turned them into a successful company; he is an exporter who wants free trade agreements that open global markets to his goods; and he is a successful business leader who has created jobs. Victor’s story exemplifies how the continued expansion of our economy depends on extending the reach and strength of Hispanic Americans. Our nation will only be stronger if we give business owners like Victor, Nina, and Antonio the opportunity to act on their ideas and pursue their dreams.
Our path forward must also ensure our people and ideas can move at the rapid pace of today’s economy. Our economy depends on functioning highways, bridges, rail lines, ports and airports, which allow workers to get to their jobs and businesses to get their goods to markets at home and abroad. But we have been under-investing in these key components of our economic foundation; as a result, 65 percent of our roads are considered to be in poor condition. In May, Congress passed a short-term extension of the highway trust fund – for the 33rd time. Just think about that: we are the United States of America, and we are funding our infrastructure in 3-month increments. That is not the way to sustain our global economic leadership. We need stable, secure, predictable funding for essential projects, so that our governors and our mayors can make the investments needed to enhance our global competitiveness and support millions of good-paying jobs.
At the same time, we live in an age when technological innovation and economic growth go hand-in-hand. To thrive, our country must have the digital infrastructure necessary to keep our students, businesses, and families a step ahead. This Administration has invested in more than 113,000 miles of new or upgraded broadband, targeting our efforts to expand internet access to underserved rural and urban areas. But over 20 percent of U.S. homes still have no access to high-speed internet, which places families, children, communities – and our entire country – at a disadvantage. Working together, we must ensure that our nation’s path forward is built on a strong, innovative foundation designed to move at the speed of the 21stcentury.
Investments in people, investments in innovation and entrepreneurs, investments in places: these are among the key steps that will define our path forward to a more competitive, growing economy. For America to achieve this vision, the Administration, NCLR, Hispanic Americans, the public and private sectors – all of us must work as partners, as peers, and as fellow leaders. Our collective success depends on affording every American in every community the ability to contribute to our prosperity; to get an education and find a good job; to realize their full potential; and to build ladders of opportunity for future generations.
Throughout our history, when we have met this task, our people have emerged stronger. That was certainly the case in my own family. My great-grandfather, Nicholas, and his parents emigrated from Kyiv in 1881, fleeing their home out of fear for their safety – and in search of opportunity. They found a new home in Chicago, where Nicholas taught himself English by reading the newspapers he sold on city streets. He would eventually put himself through college and law school, start his own firm, and build up the foundation for our family’s success. Nicholas started with nothing, but he was blessed to come to a country that allowed him to start businesses and enabled our family to fulfill our highest aspirations – to live the American dream.
I firmly believe that all Americans deserve the opportunity to realize their own dreams. I stand ready to be your partner in empowering Hispanic Americans and all of our people to write their own stories of economic possibility. I stand prepared to work with NCLR and with all of you to secure a future of competitiveness, growth, and prosperity for our nation. Thank you, NCLR, for your advocacy and your leadership on behalf of the Latino community and our country.
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
