Only 17.5 percent of businesses in operation in 2014 were minority owned, even though the bureau estimates that African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other ethnicities account for more than 38 percent of the country’s overall population.
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The percentage of U.S. businesses owned by women and ethnic minorities continues to lag the representation of those demographic segments in the nation’s population, but according to new U.S. Census Bureau data, their ranks in company ownership may be growing.
That was the second-highest rate among the nation’s 50 largest metro areas in 2014, the most recent year figures are available.
The bureau estimates there were 5.4 million companies and businesses with paid employees at the end of 2014. Surprisingly, the bureau estimates that only 3.1 percent of US businesses in operation in 2014 had been around for at least 16 years. There were 5.4 million USA firms with paid employees – the survey does not include firms with a single worker – according to the report, and of those, 17.5 percent, or 949,318, were minority-owned. Told that minority-owned businesses were more than 23 percent of the total number of businesses in the area, Jennings said, “Most of us feel we could be at 35 percent to 40 percent because of the opportunities here”.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s first annual entrepreneur census shows that almost 1 in 10 U.S. companies with employees were less than 2 years old in 2014. Most firms had fewer than 10 employees.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington region, there were 107,964 businesses with employees, of which 7,417 were Hispanic-owned and 2,991 were black-owned.
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Most Midwestern states also were below average in the new Census Bureau survey, though only Iowa trailed Wisconsin.
