As of 2025, more than 422,000 people of Hispanic or Latino descent call Minnesota home. Our Hispanic and Latino population is one of the fastest growing racial and ethnic groups in the state, experiencing 22% growth since 2020, compared to 2% population growth statewide.
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month 2026, here are a few things Compass data can tell us about Minnesota's Hispanic and Latino communities.
More than 70 million people of Hispanic and Latino descent live in the U.S. At 21% of the national population, Hispanic and Latino Americans are the country's largest racial and ethnic minority group.
Minnesota is home to a relatively small share of this national population. More than 422,000 people of Hispanic and Latino descent call Minnesota home, making Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans 7% of the state’s total population and our second-largest racial and ethnic minority.
Part of that story is immigration. Nationally, more than half of immigrants are from Latin America, compared to 27% of immigrants in Minnesota. Minnesota is not a top destination for Hispanic and Latino immigrants, which means we also have fewer second- and third-generation residents.
More than half of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans are of Mexican heritage, while others trace their roots back to a large variety of countries. Even within those cultural groups there is wide variation, from immigrants recently arrived in the country to those whose families have been in the U.S. for generations.
On Minnesota Compass, we create community profiles for cultural groups of 7,000 or more residents, including the groups below with ancestry in Latin America. Strengths, challenges, and experiences are different across communities, and disaggregating data from the broad Census “Hispanic or Latino” category into unique cultural groups can help communities see themselves in the data more accurately and meaningfully.
More than one-third of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans live in greater Minnesota (37%), but this varies across Latino cultural communities. About half of Guatemalan and Honduran Minnesotans live in greater Minnesota, while large majorities of Ecuadorian and Salvadoran Minnesotans live in the metro area.
Several greater Minnesota counties are home to especially large, concentrated Hispanic and Latino communities. More than one-third of the population in Nobles and Watonwan counties are Hispanic and Latino. There are more than a dozen counties in the central and southern regions of the state where Hispanic and Latino residents make up 10% of the population or more.
About one-third of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans are foreign-born (34%), but the story varies by specific cultural group. Much larger shares of Honduran, Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Guatemalan Minnesotans are immigrants, while more than three-quarters of Cuban Minnesotans were born in the U.S. People born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens at birth; as a result, nearly all Puerto Rican Minnesotans are native-born.
Three-quarters of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans are employed (75%), just slightly below the statewide average of 79%. Proportions of adults working are similar after accounting for margins of error, despite what appear to be differences across Latino cultural groups.
Overall, Minnesota’s Hispanic- and Latino-headed households have lower median household income than the state as a whole: $72,400, compared to $87,100 statewide. Here again, there are some variations in median household income across Latino cultural groups, but most differences are not statistically meaningful after accounting for margins of error.
Households are housing cost-burdened when they pay 30% or more of their income for housing. About a third of Hispanic- and Latino-headed households pay too much for housing (33%), a slightly higher level of housing cost burden than among all households statewide (28%).
Housing cost-burden looks fairly similar across most of Minnesota’s Latino communities, with the exception of the Ecuadorian community, which faces a higher rate of housing cost burden.
Much of that difference in housing cost burden is due to lower rates of homeownership. Just over half of Hispanic- and Latino-headed households own their homes (54%), compared to more than 72% of households statewide.
Health insurance is one of the biggest disparities for Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans, with 20% lacking health insurance compared to 6% of all Minnesotans. Uninsured rates are especially high in Minnesota's Ecuadorian, Guatemalan, and Honduran communities, all of which have greater shares of recent migrants who may work in jobs without benefits. Lack of healthcare access shows up in population health, with a lower share of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans describing their health as good or excellent.
Thirty-four percent of Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans are children and youth (ages 0-17), compared to 22% statewide. This means that, in the coming decades, Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans will likely form a larger share of our state's future workforce.
However, our state’s education and youth support systems have a way to go to close opportunity gaps for Hispanic and Latino children. Smaller shares of Hispanic and Latino students are proficient in reading and math compared to students statewide. Those gaps persist to graduation, with just 72% of Hispanic and Latino students graduating on time compared to 85% statewide, one of the lowest rates of high school graduation for Latino students in the country.
Although we don’t have these data on specific Latino cultural groups, it is clear that language barriers for recent immigrants play a role, with much lower shares of English learners meeting state standards and graduating compared to Hispanic and Latino students without language barriers.
Select educational outcomes for Hispanic and Latino students by English language learner status, 2025
| 3rd grade reading proficiency | 8th grade math proficiency | On-time high school graduation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hispanic and Latino students (English learners) | 10% | 5% | 57% |
| Hispanic and Latino students (not English learners) | 43% | 31% | 82% |
| All students | 46% | 42% | 85% |
Source: Minnesota Department of Education.
Hispanic and Latino students also report being less connected to their communities across several measures.
- Just 59% of Hispanic and Latino students feel that adults in their community care about them, compared to 65% statewide.
- While 57% of statewide students regularly participate in enrichment activities, just 37% of Hispanic and Latino students do. Percentages are even lower for Ecuadoran, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran students, who we know have a higher share of recent immigrants.
Improving these community connections will also be essential to a thriving future workforce.
An article on Hispanic and Latino Minnesotans would be incomplete without acknowledging the huge and disproportionate impact of Operation Metro Surge and ongoing federal immigration actions in 2025 and 2026 on these communities. The most reliable statewide information as of this publication date predates these actions, and so will not reflect their social and economic impacts. We do know from preliminary data that a high share of ICE arrests were among people from Ecuador – which saw over 1,000 arrests, in a community that is only around 19,000 in size – and from Mexico. Aside from arrests, the impacts of families missing work, school, medical appointments, and more due to fear of being targeted will ripple through our communities for years. Our ability to know the full impacts is impacted as well, as loss of trust leads to fewer vulnerable people willing to respond to federal and local surveys.
What we do know is that Minnesota’s Hispanic and Latino communities are large and diverse, and any strategy aimed at mitigating the impact of federal actions or closing opportunity gaps will need to address each community’s unique needs. Minnesota Compass’s disaggregated profiles of cultural communities can be one resource toward understanding our state’s diversity of people, quality-of-life outcomes, strengths, and challenges.
A note on definitions and methodologies
Some data sources in this article group “Hispanic” and “Latino” respondents together into one racial and ethnic group, but these two terms have different meanings. “Hispanic” is a language-based identity and refers to individuals who speak Spanish or come from a Spanish-speaking country (like Spain). “Latino” is a geographic- and heritage-based identity and refers to those who come from or with ancestry in Latin America. People with Hispanic or Latino ethnicity can also identify as any race, which can include a wide range of ancestries, birthplaces, and cultural identities. For example, a person can be Black and Hispanic/Latino.
Grouping people who speak the same language, or who have ancestry from similar parts of the world, is common practice in data collection and analysis. However, when we combine groups in this way, we can also miss nuances in the data that help us understand quality of life across distinct cultural groups. In this article, we have disaggregated data by Latino cultural community where possible to more accurately reflect variations between cultural communities.
