Minority-owned firms thrive, Census survey finds

Latino businesses outpace general population in revenue growth

03/22/2001

By Dianne Solís / The Dallas Morning News

Latinos and black Americans turned to capitalism like never before in the 1990s, with their highest level of entrepreneurship ever.

And Latino-owned businesses saw a surge in revenue that outstripped that of the general population. Black-owned businesses, however, saw their revenue grow at a lower rate than that of the general population.

The economic snapshot was released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. It is based on surveys done in 1997 as compared with the last economic census of 1992.

"We are seeing a much faster growth in the number of Hispanic firms," said Eddie Salyers, chief of the Census Bureau's economic branch.

On average, the number of U.S. businesses grew by 7 percent and revenue grew by 40 percent between 1992 and 1997, the survey suggests. Latinos saw business ownership grow by 30 percent and revenue spurt up nearly 50 percent. Blacks saw business ownership grow by 26 percent, but revenue grew by 33 percent.

Latinos own 6 percent of the nation's businesses, while blacks own 4 percent, the economic census showed.

That lags population statistics, which show that each of the groups now makes up about 13 percent of the nation, according to the 2000 Census data released this month.

In Texas, Latinos own 16 percent of all businesses while blacks own about 7 percent.

Top states for Latino businesses are California, Texas, Florida and New York. Top states for black businesses are New York, California, Texas and Florida.

Sole proprietorships made up the largest number of businesses owned by Latinos – 1 million of them out of a total of 1.2 million.

Likewise, 737,100 of the 823,500 black-owned businesses were sole proprietorships.