Remember what I said about Obama missing an opportunity when he failed to link immigration reform to the economy? According to unemployment numbers that I spotted gracias to the National Institute for Latino Policy, despite some pundits saying that the economy is slowly rebounding, Latino unemployment in the U.S. remains disproportionately high.

It’s being reported that last month overall unemployment dropped to 9.7 percent from 10 percent, not a whole lot really but the tiny drop looks more significant compared to the rise in Latino unemployment.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Latino households in January was an estimated 12.6 percent, compared to 8.7 percent for non-Latino Whites.

While making up 15 percent of the country’s population (not including Puerto Rico), the 2,849,000 Latinos who were unemployed in January 2010 represented 30.6 percent of the total unemployed in the US.

Since January of last year, the unemployment rate for Latinos rose from 9.9 to 12.6 percent. It was, however, little changed from December 2009.

Among Latino adults (ages 20 and over), the unemployment rate for Latino woman last month was 11.5 percent, compared to 13.8 percent for Latino men. For young Latinos (ages 16 to 19), the unemployment rate was 37.2 percent.

What we need to remember about these unemployment numbers is that they actually are a low estimation of reality. These statistics do not usually reflect the underemployed and those who are not actively participating in the unemployment system. The numbers are even higher in the undocumented immigrant community, workers who were never part of the government unemployment system.