TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Hola, ya’ll.

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its latest look at the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States and the Hispanic population is now 15 percent of the total. Alabama is behind the national percentage in Hispanic population, but is gaining, from 1.7 percent in 2000 to 2.7 in 2007.

Annette Watters, manager of the state data center at The University of Alabama, said, “Every race group is increasing in Alabama except one – Caucasian. In 2000 Alabama was 71 percent white and by 2007 it was 70 percent white.”

Watters said that nationally Hispanics are the largest minority group in the country, with blacks second. “That is not the case in Alabama where 27 percent of the population is black,” Watters said. “The federal government does not recognize Hispanic as a race, although it does recognize Hispanic as a separate minority group. Even though many Hispanics think of that as their race, the government thinks of it as an ethnicity. When forced to choose something else as their race, most Hispanics in Alabama identify with the white race.”

Watters also noted that the 45 to 64 age group comprises a larger share of Alabama's total population than it did in 2000. “These are the baby-boomers,” Watters said.

Another group that is larger both by number and percentage in Alabama is those 80 years old and older. There are now about 145,000 people in Alabama in that age category, according to Watters.

On the flip side, though, there now are fewer children aged 5 to14 in Alabama than there were in 2000. “But there are a good many more people aged 25-29,” Watters said, “and they seem to be having babies because there are also more infants and preschoolers than there were at the last census.”