Spanish Speakers in New Jersey

We decided to look into each New Jersey county to find where the largest and smallest populations of Spanish speakers were in the state. Our findings show that while there are many Spanish speakers spread out over several counties, there was a significant drop as you headed down into Southern New Jersey. Below is a bar graph detailing the total estimated Spanish Speakers from highest to lowest.

ggplot(njSpa, aes(x= reorder(NAME, -estimate), y= estimate )) +
  geom_col() +
  theme_linedraw()+
   xlab('County') +
  ggtitle('Total Estimated Spanish Speakers per County')+
  theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 90, hjust = 1), plot.title =
          element_text(color = "red", face = "bold", hjust = .5))

As you can see, Hudson County (Northern New Jersey) had the highest number of estimated Spanish Speakers whereas Salem County (Southern New Jersey) had the lowest. To explain this drastic difference, we took into account the population per county and found that Hudson County was far more heavily populated than Salem and that there was a larger Hispanic/Latino population in Hudson County.

Population Totals in Hudson County vs. Salem County

Hudson County, New Jersey	Salem County, New Jersey
662,619	65,120

Hispanic/Latino Population in Hudson County vs. Salem County

Hudson County, New Jersey	Salem County, New Jersey
283,504	5,012

This information tells us that only ~7% of Salem County’s population is Hispanic/Latino whereas ~43% of Hudson County’s population is Hispanic/Latino. It is important to note that while not all Spanish speakers are necessarily of Hispanic or Latino background, it is a big indicator of whether or not a person can speak Spanish.