The American economy is at a standstill and seems stuck on that plateau. The unmovable unemployment rate has been added to the poverty rate that affects more than 46 million people, 15.1 percent of the population, according to the latest Census figures. Experts confirm that this is the highest rate since 1993.

The numbers reveal a panorama that isn't very encouraging. The average domestic increase suffered a drop of 2.3 percent since 2009. The number of people without medical insurance coverage is about 50 million people, and the number of people older than 16 who haven't worked at least one week, increased from 83.3 million in 2009 to 86.7 million last year.

Homeless in San Francisco, USA. Image by Son of Groucho (CC BY 2.0).

Unfortunately, the minorities, Hispanics in particular, aren't excluded from the spectre of poverty. The average suffered a sharp decrease of 2.3 percent, from US$38,667 to US$37 ,759 in 2009, which indicates that this group still hasn't recuperated from the figures from 1999 prior to the drop in 2001. To put the severity of this issue in perspective, poverty in the United States also exceeds that of other countries in Latin America like Argentina (8.1 percent), Chile (9.8 percent), Uruguay (6.3 percent), and is getting closer to that of Brazil (19.3 percent), according to a report from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

USA español [es], a blog by Cristina F. Pereda, cites the disheartening figures that avoided the advancement of Hispanics:

Mientras que la renta per cápita se redujo en 1.2 por ciento para el conjunto de la población, en el caso de los hispanos descendió un 3.5 por ciento entre 2008 y 2009. También empeoró el nivel de ingresos de las familias, que se redujo casi un 8 por ciento, sólo por detrás de las afroamericanas (con un 11.8 por ciento) y en comparación con niveles del año 2000.

The blog GB Latino TV [es] included a video report from an Argentine reporter in which the presenter is shocked by the level of poverty in the United States. He gives a short summary with respect to this:

El 15,2% de los estadounidenses vive en la pobreza, lo que se traduce en más de 46 millones de habitantes. Su nivel más alto desde 1993, informó la oficina de censos de ese país.

InmigranteTV [es], besides offering the same census results of Hispanic families, outlines that the recent patterns in the economy have been overshadowed by the Obama administration:

Esta es otra situación muy negativa, sobre todo cuando el presidente acaba de presentar un plan de empleo con el cual se espera darle un estímulo a la economía.

Twitter users didn't expect the results of this Census. PV Marketing (@pvmkt) [es] shares a video:

Video que habla de que uno de cada cuatro #hispanos en EU, son pobres. http://goo.gl/bKMkX

Meredith Dodson (@dodsonadvocate) [es] isn't so surprised by these halting statistics:

Alarmante, pero no del todo :( RT @alexcawthornedc: tasas de pobreza para negros e hispanos (>27%) más de 2 veces q los blancos #povertydata#Census

Carmen Ortiz-McGhee (@ortizmcghee) [es] is astounded by the state of poverty among Hispanic children:

Hispanos=37 por ciento de los niños en pobreza según un nuevo reporte del censo…espeluznante!

Alex Guerrero (@Vzla22 ) [es] says it all in the first word of his tweet:

Inaceptable: 15% de estadounidenses viven en pobreza. Entre los latinos el % es 26.1% = 1 de cada 4 >> http://1.usa.gov/pCOqCe#latism

In conclusion, for Eileen C. Rivera (@eileencrivera) [es] the results of the census are another bad precedent for minorities in the the country:

Más malas noticias del reporte del Censo: tasa de pobreza para hispanos se disparó al 26.6 por ciento, para los negros aumentó a un 27.4 por ciento. http://wapo.st/nF4sMS