2019 National Trends for African-American Small Business Owners
- African American small business owners are younger and include more women, as they don’t wait as long to jump on the opportunity of opening their own small business compared to the average small business owner.
- African American business owners age 40 to 49 overtake the average at 32 percent versus 25 percent.
- There are more millennial African American small business owners (23%) than the average (18%).
- There are more female African American small business owners than the average by a solid 15 percentage points.
- Thirty-eight percent of African American small business owners are women — a big distinction from the average small business owner, of whom only 23 percent are women.
- Between 2016 and 2018, there was a 6% increase in profitability for African-American small business owners.
- 81% of Black business owners expect future revenue growth, and 60% expect to grow in size by hiring more employees.
- 41% of Black business owners had no outstanding debt, significantly lower than their white (29%), Hispanic (33%) and Asian counterparts (35%).
- With a 45 percent increase in industry share, African American small business owners are opening more health, beauty, and fitness businesses than in 2018. Health, beauty, and fitness overtook last year’s most popular industry, business services, as the most popular industry for African American small businesses.
