Number of Minority-owned Businesses by State
Recent statistics on entrepreneurship show that the number of minority-owned businesses in the United States has increased by 35% over the past 10 years. These minority-owned business statistics also show that these companies generate $700 billion in sales annually.
How many minority-owned businesses are there in the US, and where are they located? To answer these questions, here’s a ranking of minority-owned businesses by state.
Minority-owned businesses by state: top 10
According to the latest US Small Business Administration report, there are currently 9.7 million minority-owned small businesses across the country. A large majority of them (8.7 million, or 89.2%) are non-employing businesses—i.e., they are fully run and operated by one person and have no hires.
The state with the largest number of minority-owned businesses is California, with 1.89 million. Incidentally, the Golden State also has the highest number of small businesses of all 50 US states. This means that nearly half (45%) of the 4.2 million small businesses in California are minority-owned.
Second on the list ranking minority-owned businesses by state is Texas. There are 1.37 million minority-owned businesses there, making up 42% of all of the state’s small businesses. Florida follows in third place, with 1.28 million. California, Texas, and Florida are the only states with more than one million minority-owned businesses.
With close to 761,000, New York has the fifth-largest number of minority-owned businesses, and Georgia wraps up the top five, home to just under 473,000 of them. Illinois ranks next, with 343,213 minority-owned businesses. These six states mentioned so far follow the same order as the six states with the highest number of small businesses.
Here are the other four entries on this list ranking minority-owned businesses by state:
- New Jersey: 305,741
- Maryland: 255,870
- Virginia: 246,840
- North Carolina: 234,507
These minority-owned business statistics show that these 10 states are the only ones that have more than 200,000 minority-owned small businesses. Next on the list is Pennsylvania, which has 169,000.
This ranking should come as no surprise, considering these states’ large populations. Seven of them are among the 10 most populous US states, and have more than 10 million inhabitants. This makes them extremely attractive places to start a business.