Growth In Latino-Owned Businesses
Fueled by a rapidly expanding Hispanic consumer market, the numberof Hispanic-owned businesses is growing much faster than the national rate forother companies.
Hispanics owned nearly 1.6 million businesses in 2002, a 31percent increase from five years earlier, according to a report Tuesday by the CensusBureau. The number of all U.S. companies grew by 10 percent, to about 23million, during the same period.
“The Hispanic consumer market is exploding,” saidMichael Barrera, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.”Who knows that consumer market best?”
Hispanic consumers spend $700 billion a year, a figure that isexpected to climb to $1 trillion by the end of the decade, Barrera said at anews conference.
Ronald Langston, director of the Commerce Department’s MinorityBusiness Development Agency, said immigration is helping to increase thediversity of America’s economy.
He noted that one in 10 U.S. workers is Hispanic, a figure that isexpected to grow to one in four by 2050.
“The United States will once again become a nation of immigrants,”Langston said.
The overwhelming majority of Hispanic-owned businesses wereone-person enterprises, according to the report. Only 13 percent had anyemployees other than the owner. About a fourth of all U.S. businesses hademployees in 2002, the report said.
New businesses started by Hispanics face many of the same problemsas those started by non-Hispanics, said Louis Olivas, assistant vice presidentfor academic affairs at Arizona State University. Money to start and expand isusually the biggest hurdle, he said.
“All startup businesses face funding issues,” Olivassaid.
Some Hispanic business owners also face language barriers, butthose who speak both Spanish and English have advantages, he said.
The report is based on administrative records and a survey of 2.4million businesses. The Census Bureau defines Hispanic-owned businesses asprivate companies in which Hispanics hold at least 51 percent of stock orinterest. The report does not classify public companies, with publicly tradedstock, because they can be owned by many stockholders of unknown ethnicities.
Hispanics owned nearly 7 percent of all businesses in 2002, upfrom about 6 percent in 1997.
They made up a little more than 13 percent ofthe population in 2002, but they have accounted for half of the nation’spopulation growth since the start of the decade, according to a recent reportby the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Source: AP, Mar. 21, 2006
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