Black-Owned Business Keep Growing

Businesses owned by African Americans are growing at a fast pace in the Inland Empire, according to data released Wednesday.

Ownership, revenue and hiring among black-owned businesses are growing “significantly faster” than they are at all other businesses in the United States, California and the Inland Empire, a report by UC Riverside’s School of Business Administration Center for Economic Forecasting and Development found.

The report also revealed that, in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, “the share of black-owned businesses is converging closer to, and even outstripping, the share of blacks employed in the region.”

From 2007 to 2012, black-owned businesses grew 40.4 percent in the United States, 32.3 percent in California and 24.3 percent in the Inland Empire. By comparison, “total businesses” in those three geographic areas grew by 3.4 percent, five percent and eight percent respectively, according to the report.

That growth happened during the recession, noted Robert Kleinhenz, executive director of research at the center and one of the report’s lead authors.

“Given today’s stronger economic conditions, there is little reason to believe the expansion won’t continue,” Kleinhenz said in the statement.

The report is based data obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s recent Survey of Business Owners, which is published every five years.