Seattle sees dramatic growth of Asian American population

PHOTO BY DIOKNO

ASAM NEWS

THE GROWTH in the population of Asian Americans in King County in Washington is outpacing all other races, reports The Seattle Times.

The newest data released by the U.S Census Bureau shows the county is becoming more diverse with the number of minorities increasing significantly.

The Census Bureau reports the Asian American population in King County grew by more than 19,000 people from July 2016 to July 2017. According to the Times, people of Asian descent made up the majority of population growth in King County.

The Latino or Hispanic population grew 18 percent or by 6,000 people and ranked number two in population growth.

Blacks ranked third in population growth at 10 percent followed by multiracial people and Whites. Native Americans had the smallest population growth

In seven years, from 2010 to 2017, the Asian American population in King County has increased to 35 percent from 294,097 in 2010 to 398,334 in 2017, according to the U.S Census Bureau.

The main contributing factor of this soaring growth is due to the blooming of technology industry in Seattle, reported the Times. The rapid development of the tech industry attracted newcomers to come and seek a fortune as software developers, including many Asian Americans, according to the 2017 data of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Geekwire reports Seattle has become the fastest growing market for software developers in the states and it offers promising salaries for tech-savvy workers.

Not only that, DataUSA shows that the Asian American workers get the second highest paid salaries in King County with the average salary of $67,321.

The Times reveals that last year the growth of the White population increased only 5 percent or by 1,600 people.

The Seattle Times reports its unclear if fewer White people are moving into King county or more people are leaving.

Despite the increased diversity in King County, Whites still are the majority.

Whites make up 68 percent of the population or 1,488,281 people. Asian Americans comprise 18.2 percent of the total population or 398,334.

TGIF FEATURE: AAPI history and demographics at a glance

MAY is Asian Pacific American Heritage Week and to help employers and those agencies seeking grants to service the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population, DiversityInc publishes these charts and figures, updating them every year.

This diversity-management resource offers insight to evolving workplace diversity, featuring a detailed timeline of Asian/American history and the relevant demographics you need to know.

President Jimmy Carter signed a joint resolution in 1978 that declared May 4–10, 1979, as the first Asian Pacific American Heritage Week. This was later extended by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 to a month-long observance. 

The month commemorates the arrival of the first Japanese immigrant, a fisherman named Nakanohama Manjiro, or “John Mung,” to the United States on May 7, 1843, and marks the transcontinental railroad’s completion on May 10, 1869, half of which was bulit by Chinese laborers.

The latest population figures, based on the 2010 Census but extrapolated to 2015, shows that Indian/Americans have surpassed Filipino/Americans as the second largest Asian ethnic group in the U.S. The boom of Asian Indians is attributed to the use of H1-B visa used to attract workers with specialties needed in the U.S. Many of those imported workers, who bring their families with them, eventually become U.S. citizens.

More than half of all H-1B visas have been awarded to Indian nationals, according to the Pew Research Center. From fiscal years 2001 to 2015, workers from India received the largest share (50.5%) of all H-1B visas for first-time employment, while the second-largest share went to workers from China (9.7%). Other countries receiving a large share of visas during this time include Canada (3.8%), the Philippines (3.0%) and South Korea (2.8%).

Click the links below to download a PDF, or click these links to expand: Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Timeline and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Facts & Figures.

Another good source for statistics about the AAPI community is the Pew Research Center's The Rise of Asian America report done in 2013.

Pew study: Asian Americans surpass Latinos as the fastest growing racial group

THE ASIAN AMERICAN population is now the fastest growing segment of the U.S., overtaking the growth rate of U.S. Latinos.

The Pew Research Center study, which analyzed U.S. Census Bureau data, found that the U.S. Hispanic population grew annually on average by only 2.8 percent between 2007 and 2014. In the years between 2000 and 20007, the rate was 4.4 percent. The Pew study released today (Sept. 8), came to the same conclusion that the U.S. Census Bureau came to earlier this year.

In that same time span, the Asian American population has been growing at a steady 3.4 percent. In an earlier study, the growth rate of Asian/Americans was driven by increased  immigration from Asian countries, especially from South Asia and China.

RELATED:

• Asians still the fastest growing racial group in U.S.
• Asians are part of the U.S. immigration debate
• Immigration in reverse
• The number of AAPIs will surpass African/Americans by mid-century

The lower growth rate among Latinos was explained by two demographic trends. The Immigration rate from Latin America has slowed to a relative trickle compared to the highpoint of Latino immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, in the case of Mexico, immigration has now reversed back toward Mexico since 2009.

As a result, the main driver of Latino population growth shifted to U.S. births. But here too, change is underway: Throughout much of the early 2000s birth rates of Hispanic women ages 15 to 44 were about 95 births per 1,000 women, reaching a peak of 98.3 in 2006. However, since the onset of the Great Recession, their birth rates have declined, steadily falling to 72.1 births per 1,000 Latino/American women ages 15 to 44 in 2014.

Since 2000, more immigrants were coming from Asia than from Latin America making the Asian/American population poised to increase its percentage of the U.S. population.

According to the U.S. Census, the Asian/American proportion of the total U.S. population is hovering around 6 percent. The largest ethnic groups represented in the census were Chinese (3.79 million), Filipino (3.41 million), Indian (3.18 million), Vietnamese (1.73 million), Korean (1.7 million), and Japanese (1.3 million).

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AAPI community no longer "statistically insignificant;" multi-university grant for extensive survey

ASIAN/AMERICANS have long suffered as the forgotten minority, invisible on the American consciousness except for the ubiquitous Chinese restaurants found in almost every town in the U.S. That invisibility was  made even worse by the lack of data about AAPIs because pollsters and surveyors thought the community "statistically" insignificant. 

Despite their rapid growth and remarkable diversity, Asian/Americans remain an understudied group whose experiences and attitudes are not reflected in national polls.

All that is about to change.

Asian/Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, whose numbers are becoming increasingly influential in the world of politics, education and in popular culture. 

(clockwise from top left) Professors Karthick Ramakrishnan,
Jennifer Lee, Taeku Lee and Janelle Wong

To address this lack of information, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a multi-campus team of researchers a $507,132 grant to undertake the most extensive study of Asian/Americans to date.

The team includes Karthick Ramakrishnan, associate dean of the University of California, Riverside School of Public Policy and professor of public policy and political science; Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at UC Irvine; Taeku Lee, professor of political science and law at UC Berkeley; and Janelle Wong, professor of American students and director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland.

The study will expand upon the National Asian American Survey (NAAS), which was founded in 2008 and repeated in 2012. The NAAS is a scientific and nonpartisan effort to poll the opinions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and is the only nationally representative academic survey of this population. NAAS 2016 will focus on three core themes: (1) immigrant and second-generation incorporation; (2) race and ethnic relations and attitudes; (3) civic and political participation. Findings from the survey, which will be released in 2017, will prove an accurate portrait of the Asian American population, dispel myths, and correct misconceptions about the group.

“NAAS 2016 will allow researchers to study Asian Americans, who are often ignored in research projects because of their small and statistically unreliable sample sizes in other national and longitudinal surveys,” explained Ramakrishnan, the principal investigator on the NSF-funded project. “The results also will enable us to compare Asian/Americans with three more thoroughly studied groups: African/Americans, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites.”

The researchers plan to conduct their study in 2016 and release the data to the public in summer 2017.

“The Asian American population is rapidly growing and changing, and with NAAS, we have a unique opportunity to study dynamics like intra-racial attitudes. Never before has a survey focused on how Asian ethnic groups view each other, and how they construct an Asian ethnic hierarchy,” said Jennifer Lee, co-principal investigator on the project.

Taeku Lee, another co-principal investigator, added, “Arguably the nation’s most dynamic and diverse population, the views and experiences of Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders remains largely relegated to the shadows. With data from this quadrennial project, the 2016 NAAS promises to shed critical light on the social, economic, and political life and civic engagement of AAPIs.”

Researchers will survey approximately 3,600 individuals representing the six largest U.S. Asian ethnic groups, who account for more than 80 percent of Asian/American adults – Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese. The telephone survey will be conducted in at least 11 languages, which is critical since more than 70 percent of Asian/Americans were born outside the United States.
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Participants will be asked about personal experiences and attitudes related to immigration to the United States, inter- and intragroup relations and attitudes, civic and political involvementparty affiliation, voting behavior, health and financial status, racial and ethnic identification, discrimination, stereotypes, beliefs about racial and class-based inequality, and affirmative action.

Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian/American population grew at a rate of 46 percent, compared to a 10 percent growth rate for the overall U.S. population. Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders continue to exhibit the fastest population growth rates, and now number over 20 million residents, or more than 6 percent of the U.S. population.

Fueling their growth is immigration. China and India are now the top sending countries for immigrants to the U.S., moving ahead of Mexico. By 2065, demographers estimate that Asian/Americans will comprise about 14 percent of the U.S. population. As a share of voters, Asian/Americans have been the fastest-growing electorate over the last five presidential elections, increasing from 1.7 million voters in 1996 to 3.9 million by 2012.

Accompanying their growth in numbers is their growing diversity. Asian Americans comprise more than 20 distinct ethnic groups and exhibit greater socioeconomic diversity than any other U.S. racial group.

For example, while Indians, Chinese, and Koreans exhibit higher levels of educational attainment than all U.S. groups, including native-born whites, Cambodian, Laotian, and Hmong have lower rates of high school completion than African/Americans and Latinos. Immigrants from India and China make up the majority of high-skilled visa holders in the U.S., and these groups not only bring much-needed skills, but also racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity to the U.S., and its STEM and technology sectors. At the same time at the opposite end of the economic spectrum, Asian/American immigrants also constitute a significant share of low-wage workers concentrated in the restaurant and personal-service industries.

These characteristics make the study of Asian/Americans essential to gaining an understanding of social, legal, and economic processes like immigrant and second-generation incorporation, inter- and intra-group attitudes, racial formation and change, and civic and political engagement, Ramakrishnan said.

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