{"id":7781,"date":"2025-02-12T11:54:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/a-look-at-black-owned-businesses-in-the-us\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:58:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T03:58:20","slug":"a-look-at-black-owned-businesses-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2025\/02\/12\/a-look-at-black-owned-businesses-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"A look at Black-owned businesses in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Vendors
Vendors wait for customers at Black Owned Bos.’s weekend market in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood on Sept. 22, 2024. (Jessica Rinaldi\/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than one-in-five Black adults in the United States say owning a business is essential to their personal definition of financial success, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey<\/a>. While Black-owned businesses have grown significantly in the U.S. in recent years, they still make up a small share of overall firms and revenue, according to our analysis of federal data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How we did this<\/summary>\n

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to examine the characteristics of Black-owned businesses in the United States. The analysis relies primarily on data from the 2023 Annual Business Survey<\/a> (ABS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Science Foundation\u2019s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. The 2023 ABS covers data from 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey \u2013 conducted annually since 2017 \u2013 includes all nonfarm U.S. firms with paid employees and receipts of $1,000 or more in the year being studied. A firm is defined as a business \u201cconsisting of one or more domestic establishments under its ownership or control.\u201d Majority business ownership is defined as having more than 50% of the stock or equity in the firm. The Census Bureau counts multiracial firm owners under all racial categories they identify with; Hispanic firm owners may be of any race. Read more about the ABS methodology<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, there were 194,585 U.S. firms with majority Black or African American ownership.<\/strong> That\u2019s up from 124,004 in 2017<\/a>, according to the latest estimates from the Annual Business Survey<\/a> (ABS), conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Science Foundation. Black-owned firms\u2019 gross revenue soared by 66% during this time span, from an estimated $127.9 billion in 2017 to $211.8 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this growth, majority Black-owned businesses made up only about 3% of all U.S. firms in 2022 that were classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners. And they accounted for just 1% of gross revenue from all classifiable companies that year. By comparison, in 2022, roughly 14% of all Americans were Black<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
A note on classifiable companies<\/summary>\n

The Annual Business Survey<\/a> classifies businesses as \u201cmajority Black- or African American-owned\u201d if a Black owner has more than 50% of the firm\u2019s stock or equity. The same standard holds for business owners of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The U.S. Census Bureau counts multiracial firm owners under all racial categories they identify with; Hispanic firm owners may be of any race. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all U.S. businesses are classifiable by the race or ethnicity of their owners. In 2022, about 4% of all businesses in the U.S. were not<\/em> classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners \u2013 though these firms accounted for 64% of total revenue. Ownership and revenue figures in this analysis are based on the roughly 5.6 million firms that were<\/em> classifiable by the race and ethnicity of their owners in 2022, most of which are smaller businesses.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

As has long been the case<\/a>, White majority-owned businesses made up the greatest share of classifiable firms (84%) and their revenue (92%) in 2022. About one-in-ten classifiable firms (12%) had Asian American majority owners, and no more than 8% had majority owners from another racial or ethnic group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many workers do Black-owned businesses employ?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Black or African American majority-owned firms employed roughly 1.6 million workers in 2022. The firms\u2019 annual payrolls were estimated at $61.2 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About seven-in-ten Black-owned firms (71%) had between one and nine employees in 2022.<\/strong> Much smaller shares had 10 to 49 (13%) or 50 or more (3%) workers that year. Another 13% had paid employees at some time during the year but reported having none at the time the survey was conducted. (The ABS determines employment size by the number of paid workers during the March 12 pay period.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s the most common sector for Black-owned businesses?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

By far, health care and social assistance. Nearly 50,000 of the roughly 195,000 U.S. companies with majority Black or African American ownership, or 26% of the total, were part of this sector in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looked at a different way, 8% of all<\/em> classifiable U.S. businesses in the health care and social assistance sector were majority Black-owned that year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other common sectors included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n