Chicago Market Profile

Chicago The Windy City’s population growth during the next decade will be 100 percent Hispanic December 01, 2004 By Eileen Davis Hudson The Windy City may be significantly colder than Mexico or Puerto Rico, but that hasn’t stopped the flood of emigrants from those places. Chicago’s 1.6 million Hispanic population is 75 percent Mexican, the largest Mexican population east of the Mississippi River, and 11 percent Puerto Rican. The fourth-largest Hispanic market in the United States, Chicago is poised to see its Hispanic population increase sharply from its current 17.4 percent of the total market. From 1990 to 2000, the Hispanic population represented 67 percent of the Chicago market’s population growth. From 2000 to 2012, Hispanics are projected to account for 100 percent of the growth in Chicago. The non-Hispanic population is expected to decline. “So you can see where there’s a dramatic shift in the Chicago DMA, and it clearly has a Hispanic flair,” says Bert Medina, vice president and general manager of Univision’s owned and operated WGBO and sister TeleFutura WXFT. Chicago-area Hispanics buying power is expected to jump from $28.6 billion in 2003 to $57.5 billion in 2012. Despite the growth, Medina says local Hispanic media have not reached parity with their general-market counterparts in terms of advertising dollars. from Marketing y Medios site