In San Jose, Spanish isn’t optional. It’s essential.

Hospitals, banks—most public-facing companies—aren’t hiring Spanish-speaking workers for diversity’s sake. They’re hiring them because they need them. If a large share of your customers only speak Spanish, you need staff who can speak it, too. That’s operational reality.

But society still treats bilingualism like an add-on, a perk, a resume booster, and not what it really is: a critical part of our regional workforce infrastructure.

I’m a high school senior who has spent the last year researching how Spanish-English bilingualism affects wages and hiring across the Bay Area. I’ve spoken with hiring managers, analyzed thousands of job listings and built Bilingual Bay, a job board exclusively for bilingual jobs.

What I’ve found is striking yet intuitive: The demand for bilingualism is everywhere, but our systems aren’t designed to meet it.

Employers told me that Spanish proficiency can fast-track a candidate. Many offer bonuses for bilinguals. One said Spanish was “basically required” at many branches. But despite the clear market demand, we’re not producing nearly enough bilingual graduates or properly rewarding the ones we have.

Part of the problem lies in the listing. For many companies, if Spanish isn’t “required,” they don’t pay extra for it. So companies list jobs as Spanish “preferred,” or required without the bonus.

The other part of the problem is educational. Many school systems treat bilingualism as an afterthought, not beginning foreign language education until high school. When research finds that it’s nearly impossible to achieve native proficiency if you start learning after 10 years old, it becomes clear we need a shift.

To see what’s missing here, you must look somewhere else.

Last summer, I went on an immersion trip to Guatemala, where I worked with Esperanza Juvenil, a school in Guatemala City that brings in students from the countryside to give them a chance at a better future. After the trip, I launched The Guatemala Initiative, a program where we tutor those same students in English over Zoom during breaks in the school day.

These students understand something we often don’t: Bilingualism isn’t just useful; it’s life changing. For them, English is a way to attend college, access jobs and support their families.

Many of these students grew up on a dollar a day. For them, bilingualism isn’t just a skill; it’s a way out. Economists have a term for this phenomenon: human capital—investing in skills that increase your economic mobility. In Guatemala, they’re doing exactly that. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, we’ve built an economy that depends on bilingualism, but we still treat it like a bonus.

Maybe it’s time we caught up. So where do we start?

There are a few options. We could start in schools: emphasize earlier language instruction, expand dual-language immersion programs and give real weight to the Seal of Biliteracy instead of treating it like a formality. I went to River Glen, a K-8 Spanish immersion school in San Jose, one of the few that exists. We need more like it, not as outliers but as the norm. Bilingualism is an essential skill, and our schools must treat it as such.

Employers must also play a role. With clearer language requirements in postings, meaningful bilingual bonuses and an actual recognition of Spanish as economic value, employers could lead that shift themselves.

Either way, we need to stop treating bilingualism as an afterthought. Spanish keeps San José moving. It’s a necessity, and until we treat it like one, we’re holding our region back.

Aiden Tracey is a senior at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose and founder of Bilingual Bay, a job board for Spanish-English roles in the Bay Area. He researches bilingual labor markets with guidance from Stanford University’s Claude Goldenberg.