By 2042, whites living in the United States will no longer be a majority, according to updated projections from the U.S. Census Bureau that came out this morning. This means that the landmark shift in the country’s racial composition will take place about a decade sooner than indicated by previous predictions – this represents significant consequences for the language services industry.

Looking ahead to 2050, Latinos – or to use the government’s preferred terminology, “Hispanics” – are expected to reach 133 million, while the Asian population will grow to nearly 8 percent. The Pew Research Center estimates that 82 percent of the population increase in the United States through 2050 will be due to newly-arrived immigrants and their offspring. While the likes of Lou Dobbs are probably not jumping for joy at this news, it is a good sign for the multilingual trade. Common Sense Advisory’s business confidence surveys consistently show high levels of faith in the industry on both the buyer and supplier side. We predict that these latest demographic indicators will have a positive influence on business confidence and overall market growth – for interpreting services in particular, which primarily respond to the demand for language support created by domestic multiculturalization.

What else is happening in 2050? That just happens to be the year that China is predicted to become the world’s largest economy. The need for language services in the United States will undoubtedly grow along with the increased linguistic diversity at home and the need to communicate in the languages of the dominant players in the changing global economic scene. Two years ago, we posed the question of which school subject U.S. children need more – Mandarin or math. Lately, this subject has been in the spotlight again, largely due to comments from presidential candidate Barack Obama about children needing to learn foreign languages. We explored this topic further in an op-ed that ran this week in the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune. The growing trends of international business expansion and growth of global businesses are already catapulting the language services industry to new heights. Increased multilingualism at home? For language service providers, that’s just the icing on a constantly-rising cake.