I have put quite a bit of effort into becoming conversant in Spanish, and have every desire to continue to improve my level of fluency. However, I often wonder just how competitive knowledge of Spanish really would make me in a country where many first and especially second generation Latino immigrants have been able to speak both English and Spanish much more fluently than I can from a young age. Whereas those few people in the United States who speak German, French, Italian, etc are somewhat of a rare and thus valuable commodity, it seems like there is a much more abundant supply of people who do in fact speak Spanish. To put it bluntly, why would a company hire me because I studied Spanish when they can pick from a large number of Latinos who speak it ten times better and without the “gringo” accent?

How does the supply and demand work out on this? From a career perspective, does learning Spanish really pay off for us US English speakers as much as learning other languages?