Why do most job applications ask if I am Latino or Hispanic?

its often the law..

the reason these categories exist at all is because its an economic consideration, from the census to the applications... its the US office of management and budget that controls what categories exist, and its sole purpose is to keep track of the artificial redistribution of funds along racial lines, all those govt. funds, grants, tax requirements etc.. need to be kept track of. and the primary emphasis is simply to keep track of who is white and who is not. minoritiy status in terms of politics has nothing to do with population numbers...that is a purely political consideration.

so any institution public or private that deals with the govt. in any way... would collect this kind of info. there is no particular perk for you personally unless a business is trying to fill a quota... yes technically quotas dont exist overtly...but often there are tax breaks/funding available with certain numbers of minorities..so its effectively a quota.

when it comes to things like the census or school forms... that would be in your intererst in general as thats the gauge polticians will use to try to get funding in the first place.

so they can compile their stastics and say we hire this many people from this race and so on. Same with other statistics. People like to keep track of things like that. Huge studies are done on that.

they want to know what race all the people they're hiring are.if your bilingual then yes you ll get perks.