The rush from corporate America to recruit today badly needed Hispanic talent was quite evident last week in Phoenix, Arizona, where the Society of Hispanic Professionals Engineers (SHPE) was hosting their 43rd annual convention.

300 American corporations in need of new employees flocked to Phoenix —100 more this year than last year— to compete for the young Hispanic engineers that are beginning to graduate in droves from colleges and universities all across the country.

The images of a career fair flooded with thousands of applicants, and hundreds of corporations eager to interview and recruit them, was a genuine glimpse at the current transformation of the labor market in the U.S.

Although only 7% of Hispanics are part of the STEM workforce in the country, while the Hispanic population in the country is close to 20%, the pace to increase those numbers is gathering speed, propelled by the aging and retirement of the current workforce, the rapid transformation of the nation’s demographics, the unstoppable forces of the economy, and the great job SHPE is doing to attract more Latinos to the STEM field.

Thousands of recruiters were interviewing and hiring thousands of Hispanic students and graduates over the course of the five-day event.

In total, 9,500 attendees converged on to Phoenix Convention Center—2,000 more than last year’s convention, which represents a jump of almost 20% from last year. There were 620 interview booths in Phoenix, 100 more than last year in Kansas City.

Boeing corporation alone extended 180 job offers on the spot, during the convention— 30 more than last year.

“It was a game-changing event,” the CEO of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Raquel Tamez, declared this week, announcing these unexpected numbers at the conclusion of the massive congregation of Latino professionals in Phoenix.