Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Will Boost Hispanic Business
Written by President & CEO Javier Palomarez. This article can also be found on Real Clear Politics.
President Biden and his allies in Congress have gotten major infrastructure legislation over the finish line, and America’s Hispanic workers were watching. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act dedicates more than $1 trillion to help America run more efficiently and work more effectively. It is one of the biggest such investments in a generation. Way back in August, it passed with a strong bipartisan majority in the Senate - a rare accomplishment in today’s Washington. But until late Friday, this bill was waiting to be passed by the House - held hostage as progressives fight with moderates about other spending priorities.
Make no mistake: Pumping more than $1 trillion into fixing a variety of problems — from potholed roads to weakened bridges to slow rail transportation — is a major achievement for President Biden and the Democrats and Republicans who supported it. But once the politicians in Washington finish patting themselves on the back, somebody’s going to have to implement this bill’s infrastructure solutions. That’s where the real work of this legislation will be delivered. And that’s where we come in: America’s Hispanic workforce, tens of millions strong.
Over the last 10 years, the Hispanic share of America’s labor force increased by 36%. And it’s only getting larger. In the 20-year period from 2004 to 2024, it is estimated that the Hispanic workforce will have increased by 13 million people. In the same time period, the amount of white American workers is expected to fall by 5.5 million.
Many of these Hispanic workers can be found across all levels of key infrastructure industries. Some are pouring concrete, some are driving trucks, some are designing bridges or installing cellular towers. Others are running companies, making deals and putting together financing to get these projects done. In fact, if you think about American infrastructure — and it seems a lot more of us do these days — chances are you’re thinking about a job done, or a company owned, by a Hispanic worker. Put even more simply, Hispanics build American infrastructure.
The infusion of cash into these key industries thanks to this new legislation is going to benefit millions of Hispanic workers. For example, the bill promises $110 billion in improvements for roads and bridges. According to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanics comprise 36% of the extraction and construction industries — the ones who will actually be mining the materials and fixing the roads. The same BLS data reports that nearly 24% of transportation industry workers are Hispanic. They’ll be the ones driving the trucks and trains and buses putting more than $100 billion in the bill’s transportation funding to good use.
And it’s not just the guys on the construction crews or at the wheel of trucks who will help get things moving. Increasingly, it’s the men and women in the corner office, too. The Stanford Graduate School of Business found that the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States grew by 14% between 2012 and 2017, more than doubling the national average of 6%. Much of that growth was concentrated in infrastructure industries. The number of Hispanic-owned construction companies increased by 32%, and Hispanic ownership in the transportation and warehousing sector increased by 25%. At the same time, Hispanic-owned finance and insurance companies — the organizations that could fund and underwrite important infrastructure projects — grew by 27%.
Behind each Hispanic-owned business is an American success story. Those stories abound in our community of job creators. Stories like that of CTI Construction in Salt Lake City, started by Don Salazar, are emblematic of that. This federal contracting company has an employee base of over 100 and specializes in unique design-build projects for the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy. Or Peinado Construction in Dallas, founded by Teddy Peinado, the largest Hispanic-owned industrial general contractor in Texas, with annual revenues nearing $1 billion and a clientele that includes Amazon, FedEx and Toyota.
Finally, there's Miami-based MasTec, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and makes over $8 billion in annual revenue. Led by CEO Jose Mas, MasTec is a major infrastructure company that installs pipelines, solar panels, wind turbines and cellular towers. And with this new infrastructure bill promising $65 billion to expand broadband access across the country, that could mean more work for MasTec and its 23,000 American employees.
The Biden administration deserves credit for doing its job and crafting this important infrastructure bill. It was time for some in Washington to stop playing politics and squabbling about unrelated issues and pass it, or risk losing the legislative power they were elected to utilize. Then we can now unleash the power of companies like CTI, Peinado, and MasTec and the millions of Hispanic infrastructure workers in this country to get the job done and deliver on the promise of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Written by Javier Palomarez. Javier Palomarez is the president and CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, a nonprofit organization focused on improving access to contracting in the public and private sector and fair representation of Hispanics in business, media, and politics. He is also a board member of MasTec.
