The potential acceleration of job automation spurred by COVID-19 will disproportionately affect Latinos in U.S. service sector jobs, according to a new UCLA report, which also urges state and local officials to start planning now to implement programs to support and retrain these workers.

The report, by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, looked at occupational data from the six states with the largest Latino populations and found an overrepresentation of Latinos in industries where jobs are more susceptible to automation, like construction, leisure and hospitality, agriculture, and wholesale or retail trade.

More than 7.1 million Latinos, representing almost 40% of the Latino workforce in those six states — Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Texas — are at high risk of being displaced by automation, the report shows.

“As Latinos take a disproportionate financial hit from the COVID-19 crisis, now is a good time to focus