Spanish increases your job prospects.
- Employers are seeking applicants with Spanish skills in nearly every profession. In an increasingly competitive job market, bilingual skills are in high demand. Many jobs require some type of Spanish language communication and/or interaction with local and global Spanish-speaking communities. In North America, Hispanic consumers are the fastest-growing market segment.
- Studying Spanish enhances your resume and offers greater opportunities for employment across a wide range of fields (medical, government, legal, social services, financial, education, travel/tourism, journalism/media, sales).
- 79% of recruiters cited Spanish as the additional language most in demand by employers in international business.
- Translators and interpreters are expected to become one of the fastest-growing occupations in the U.S.
Spanish expands your local and global perspectives.
- Spanish is the world’s third most spoken language, with over 400 million speakers. Spanish is the official language of 21 countries and the unofficial second language of the U.S.
- With a booming U.S. Latino population and growing numbers of Spanish speakers, there is a good chance you will interact with Spanish-speaking people and cultures on a daily basis in your job, in your community or in your own family. Interacting with people with different cultural and language backgrounds allows you to reflect on your own culture and language.
- Using your Spanish skills when visiting a Spanish-speaking country transforms your passive observation into active participation. You engage more directly with the host culture, garner a greater appreciation for how others see the world, and rethink familiar assumptions from a deeper global context.
- Speaking Spanish allows you to experience diverse Spanish-speaking cultures across the world, as well as their influences on U.S. popular culture, through the thousands of Spanish-language media outlets and the rich array of cultural contributions in areas like film, art, literature, music and food.
Speaking Spanish in the U.S. is a necessity
- Spanish is not just another foreign language. There are more than 50 million (and growing) Latinos residing in the U.S., and Hispanic cultures are now an integral part of U.S. culture.
- The U.S. is the fifth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, with over 38 million Spanish speakers. By 2050, the U.S. will be the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world.
- More than half the growth in the total U.S. population between 2000 and 2010 was due to the rise in the Hispanic population, setting the stage for an enormous increase in Spanish usage in the U.S.