Women & Minority Entrepreneurs

Do women and minority entrepreneurs have clout where it counts? Here are the cold, hard facts.

WOMEN-Census statistics on women-owned businesses released in December 1995 marked the first time the Bureau has studied the entire population of women-owned firms. Some of its findings:

• Women owned 34.1 percent of all U.S. nonfarm businesses in 1992.

• Women entrepreneurs raked in total receipts of $1.5 trillion in 1992; the average woman-owned firm earned annual receipts of $246,000.

• From 1987 to 1992, 89 percent of new women-owned firms were one-woman shops.

• The 11 percent of entrepreneurial women who employed workers dominated in revenues if not in number-they accounted for 95 percent of the sales generated by women-owned businesses in 1992.

• Among women entrepreneurs with employees, receipts rose by 146 percent between 1987 and 1992. Women entrepreneurs' explosive growth in revenues outperforms their growth in numbers, indicating that the average women-owned firm with employees is expanding rapidly and should continue to do so.

MINORITIES-Here's what a survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington, DC, think tank, found:

• A quarter of minority firms reported at least a 25 percent increase in annual sales in 1993. In the same year, only about 7 percent of nonminority companies reported a similar sales increase.

• More than half of minority-owned firms had annual sales of $1 million or more in 1993, though nearly half of them started their businesses with less than $25,000.

• The average minority-owned company was 11 years old, almost a decade younger than its nonminority counterparts.

• Nearly one-fourth of minority entrepreneurs said they recruit employees from inner-city neighborhoods; only 10 percent of nonminority companies did the same.

LATINOS-Primarily first-generation Latino companies with average annual revenues of $5.8 million were the focus of a recent MCI study conducted by The Gallup Organization. The results:

• They employ an average of two family members, and about 40 percent believe Latinos are more likely to base business dealings on personal relationships.

• About 84 percent said they were equally comfortable doing business with non-Latino companies.

• Fifty-three percent said Latino companies are more customer-service-oriented.

• One-third are involved in exporting and importing.

This article was originally published in the January 1996 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Women & Minority Entrepreneurs.