Indian Americans

Indian Americans

Indian Americans are Americans whose ancestral roots lie in India. The U.S. Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with the indigenous peoples of the Americas commonly referred to as American Indians.

During the 2000-2010 decade, Indian Americans grew by 106% and now number 3.2 million according to the 2010 census. Approximately 10% Indian Americans are of mixed ethnicity.

Indian Americans accounts for 1% of the US population (309 million) and 18% of the Asian American population.Indian Americans are the second largest Asian group in the US, after Chinese but they are the largest Asian subgroup in 25 states in America, making them the main driver in population growth of Asian Americans.

Nearly two-thirds of Indian Americans (1,904,038) live in 8 states that are home to 100,000 or more Indian Americans. California had the most Indian American residents at 528,176, and New York was second at 313,620. There are 292,256 Asian Indians in New Jersey, 3.3 percent of the state’s total population. The other states with the largest numbers of Indian Americans are Texas, 245,981; Illinois, 188,328; Florida, 128,735; Virginia, 103,916; Pennsylvania, 103,026; Georgia, 96,116; Maryland, 79,051; Massachusetts, 77,177; Michigan, 77,132; Ohio, 64,187; Washington, 61,124; and North Carolina, 57,400.

68% of Indian Americans had a bachelor’s degree or higher which dwarfs the rates of 28% nationally and 44% average for all Asian American groups.

Indian Americans led all Asian American groups with a median household income of $86,660 and per capita income of $,38,312. The median house hold income of Indian Americans is nearly double the national average ($50,200).

Despite constituting less than 1% of the U.S. population, 3% of the nation’s engineers, 7% of its IT workers and 8% of its physicians and surgeons are Indian-Americans. Indians make up a quarter of all foreign-born scientists and engineers. Two of the nation’s governors are Indians.

More than 5000 Indian-Americans serve as faculties in the universities across America. 104,897 Indian students enrolled in US universities in 2009-2010. More than 300,000 Indian-Americans work in the Information Technology sector. Approximately 35% of the hotels in the country are owned by Indians.

Approximately 70% of Indian Americans are foreign-born and 40% of the foreign-born population entered the US between 2000 and 2010. Approximately 45% of Indian legal residents immigrated under employment-based preferences and 53% came as the immediate relatives or under family sponsored preferences.

Hindi speakers in the US is estimated to be 527481 Gujarati, 304,102 and Malayalam 116,486.

Indian Americans top in diabetes with 14% suffering from this disease ─ a rate higher than all other ethnic groups, except American Indians (See diabetes among Indian Americans)