As is the case with so many US cities, the Latino population in Chicago - the country’s third largest - is continuing to grow and influence the language, culture and feel of the area.  This article provides some excellent statistics to help understand the Hispanic/Latino landscape.

With the third largest Latino population in the country, the Chicago area is no stranger to the Hispanic forces that have reshaped the nation.Latinos have driven Chicago’s population growth, stirred changes in the city’s neighborhoods, redirected marketing campaigns and changed the face of the city’s schools.

Even as the pace of immigration slows, the Hispanic population continues to boom as Latino immigrants have kids here.

It is a community set to influence the city’s future, even as it undergoes its own evolution.

Whereas Hispanic immigrants used to put down roots in Chicago, now they’re flocking to the suburbs, where the Latino population has grown by at least 250,000 since 2000—bringing the total Latino population in the six-county region to 1.7 million, 20 percent of the population, said Sylvia Puente, director of the Center for Metropolitan Chicago Initiatives at Notre Dame University’s Institute of Latino Studies.

The face of the Latino community in Chicago is changing, too, as American-born Latinos outnumber and outpace new immigrants, Puente said. With Latinos accounting for 85 percent of the growth in the region’s labor force, ensuring that the children of Latino immigrants are educated is crucial for the region’s economy, she said.

“Will the Latino labor force have the requisite skills to take over? If not, we’ll have a major labor force skills shortage,” Puente said.

Most Latinos vote Democrat, but increasingly more are registering as Republicans or Independents, said Michael Rodriguez, director of field operations for the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute. They also are becoming more politically involved: Young Latinos in Chicago are registering to vote at four times the rate of their peers around the country, Rodriguez said.

The boom in American-born Latinos has marketing implications, as advertisers who were funneling money to Spanish-speaking media realize the spending power of the better-educated, higher-earning second- and third-generation Latinos.

“There’s this perception that everyone speaks Spanish or watches Univision, but my Spanish is very much limited to when I’m with my parents,” said Jaime Viteri, founder of Chicago Latino Network. “In terms of media, we’re pretty much assimilated.”

Hailing from Mexico, Argentina and many places in between, Chicago’s Hispanics make up a diverse community.  Click to read more and see detailed statistics on Chicago’s Latino population.