Should I learn Spanish or French?

French
When your dystopic kleptocracy gets too much, it will enhance your refugee status in Canada!

1. It is false that Spanish is automatically more useful in the USA, especially for careers. Few companies pay for bilingual speakers. Plus, there are plenty of people who speak both competently as dual native languages. Competition for such jobs is fierce.

2. I got three non-teaching jobs at American companies that had Canadian contracts that required someone competent in both French and English. It often takes quite a while to find even semi-competent people. Such jobs do pay (at least a little) more.

3. Start with French, since that's your passion. Spanish will be a lot easier once you have learned enough French.

4. Both have equal difficulty for an English speaker learning a first foreign language, IF you learn to competency (not fluency), per the American Foreign Service Institute (AFSI).

5. If you end up only learning to a beginning or intermediate level (like the vast majority of Americans who learn a foreign language), then Spanish is a little bit easier:

a. It is far more phonetic. Rules are simple and few. Pronunciations often make sense to an English speaker. Spanish is stress-timed, like English. Over all, pronunciation feels more familiar.

b. French is often unphonetic. Rules are complex and numerous. Letters often make sounds that seem odd to an English speaker. There are also a lot of silent letters. French is mostly syllable-timed (syllables get equal stress, except for the last one of a sentence). It also often requires that sounds be added, removed, changed, and/or moved beyond syllable/word boundaries, resulting in phrases that are often pronounced differently than their words in isolation. Over all, pronunciation feels more alien.

c. The grammatical gender of words is often clearly marked on words in Spanish (-a for feminine, -o, for masculine). This is often untrue of French. There are many suffixes and often no suffix at all. There are plenty of exceptions to most suffixes that tend to favor one gender over another. (-a & -o, are rarely suffixes in French, with the exception of -a for determiners)

6. Spanish verbs though, are more complex, both in sheer numbers of inflected forms, and in the number of tense/mood/aspect combinations. The Spanish subjunctive is infamous for being more complicated in terms of when it is used and in how it's formed. Verbs are one reason why advanced topics are often more complex than French counterparts. In the end, if you learn to competency, the languages have equal difficulty (in terms of the number of study hours required).

Why not learn a bit of both! Indeed Spanish will be of more use almost daily in the USA, but if you plan to visit France you should certainly learn a few expressions of daily greeting etc.

Look at it this way... there are LOTS of people in the US who speak Spanish. The ability to speak Spanish doesn't really give you an employment edge anymore; there are so many native speakers of Spanish who also speak English.
However, there are not that many people who speak French fluently. In addition, my college Spanish teacher told me that, in her opinion, French is one of the easiest languages to learn well.
I would choose French.

Learn French. It is world-wide language. 

I live in US as well and do *not* know Spanish; still surviving without it. Spanish is not that useful, especially in Hawaii or Alaska.

If you live in the North of the US, or plan to live or work there or in Canada, French could be more useful. In New England they speak New England French, for example.

Base your choice on YOUR preference(s) and too, how useful it will be for YOU. No matter about us, we are not at your place and don't have the same needs..

For help you to make this choice, do a ' pro ' and ' cons ' list... ( for ex.)

That's up to you.

Make sure you understand the accent and pronunciation.

In my opinion, I think Spanish is much more useful. I spent five years taking French in school. It was a complete waste of time as I have rarely needed to use it ever since. If I had taken Spanish I could have used all the time.