The United States is home to more than two million black-owned businesses, with 124,000 of them classified as “employing companies”. But how many of these businesses are actually owned by African Americans? To answer this question, analysts looked at the 50 U. S. metros with the most black-owned businesses and compared those numbers to the total number of businesses within each metro to get the percentage of businesses owned by black.
Nine of the top 10 metropolitan areas with the highest percentage of black-owned businesses are in the south. In each of the nine metros, at least 25% of the metro's population is black. Fayetteville, North Carolina has the highest percentage of black-owned businesses, with 33% of its population being African American. Washington, D.
C., on the other hand, has the lowest percentage of black-owned businesses among the top 10 metros, with only 18%. The percentage of metro businesses owned by black is closer to parity with the percentage of African-Americans in the U. S., which is 12.8%. However, there are some exceptions.
Milwaukee has an approximately comparable percentage of black residents (16%) and black-owned businesses (1.8%), but it ranks 41st for its share of black-owned businesses. Pittsburgh's black population is 8%, and only 1% of its businesses are black owned. Researchers also looked at industries to see where black-owned small businesses are most prominent. Compared to national averages, black-owned businesses are more likely to be in the healthcare and welfare, transportation and storage industries. These two industries account for 36% of black-owned businesses.
At the national level, only about 14.7% of companies, regardless of race, belong to one of these two industries. Unlike black-owned businesses, 86.5% of all businesses are white-owned, even though whites account for only 72.0% of the U. S. Women-owned businesses are growing at a faster rate than the national average, so this may be representative of a broader national trend of women's business growth. We also connected with more than 200 black-owned businesses to recommend some notable products from 15 different brands into categories such as household goods, clothing and skin care. We also talked to 15 business owners about their experiences over the past two years.
