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Minority Report: Expanding Opportunity for All
In the new economy, small businesses, rather than Fortune 500 corporations, are the engine of American innovation and job growth. The Great Recession and subsequent jobless recovery have made this clear. Between 1992 and 2010, the economy gained 16.7 million jobs, 33 percent of which came from businesses with less than 50 employees and 32 percent from businesses with 50 to 499 employees. Between 2000 and 2010, the economy saw a net loss of 3.4 million jobs. Large businesses—those with 500 or more employees—accounted for 65 percent of that loss. In contrast, net employment in businesses with 50 to 499 employees was unchanged, while businesses with fewer than 50 employees experienced a 35 percent reduction.
Minority-owned small businesses play a crucial role in this economic picture. Such businesses employed 5.9 million workers in 2007, or 5 percent of the workforce. Furthermore, the number of minority-owned businesses, as well as their earnings and employment capacity, is growing at rates that far exceed the respective rates of growth for nonminority-owned businesses. Over the last decade, the rapid rise in revenue and employment among minority-owned firms suggests that those firms are extremely well positioned to help reduce the extraordinarily high rates of unemployment in minority communities.
But while minority-owned businesses have made tremendous advances over the last decade, they also face serious challenges. The ups and downs of the new economy are hurting all small businesses, but especially minority-owned firms. And while they can help make a dent in the unemployment problem, minority-owned businesses are still too much an afterthought in current thinking about the economy. Recent initiatives by the Obama Administration, such as the new Startup America campaign to accelerate entrepreneurship, show that policy-makers understand that entrepreneurship and small business lie at the heart of any recovery plan. Yet few policy-makers have homed in on the potential of minority-owned small businesses to help the United States out of the economic ditch.
Compounding minority business owners’ worries is the changing face of the global economy. Serious competitors to U.S. global economic leadership have emerged. In response, U.S. corporations have sought to become leaner, meaner, and more flexible, downsizing and transforming their operations by reducing the number of suppliers they depend on and requiring suppliers to have more capacity and demand flexibility. The government has also implemented changes in procurement policies that are somewhat analogous to the changes occurring in the corporate sector. To save more money, procurement departments are starting to bundle contracts and in-source more services. On top of these changes, new financial regulations have amplified the difficulties minority business owners face regarding access to capital. All of these developments have made it more challenging for minority business owners to increase their scale of operations. To ensure the continued development of these businesses, some changes in government policy need to be made.
The Lay of the Land
Over the last decade the growth of minority populations in the United States has been astounding. Newly released Census Bureau data indicate that between 2000 and 2010 the Hispanic/Latino and Asian populations increased by 43 percent each, the African-American population rose by 12.3 percent, while the white population grew by only 5.7 percent.
Less visible is the fact that business ownership among minorities is growing at an even faster rate. From 1982 to 2007, the number of African-American-owned businesses increased from just over 300,000 to 1.9 million, or by 523 percent; the number of Asian-American-owned businesses increased from 242,000 to 1.6 million, or by 545 percent; and the number of businesses owned by Hispanics and Latinos increased from 284,000 in 1982 to 2.3 million in 2007, or by 696 percent. Women-owned businesses also increased significantly, growing from 2.6 million to 7.8 million, or by 198 percent. Meanwhile, over the same period, white-owned businesses increased from 12.5 million to 22.6 million, or by 81 percent.
A milestone was achieved between 2002 and 2007. For the first time since the Census Bureau began compiling data on them in the 1970s, the number of minority-owned firms with paid employees, and the revenue from these firms, grew at a much faster clip than the respective increases for firms owned by whites. Specifically, the number of minority-owned firms with paid employees increased by 26.5 percent from 2002, while the number of white-owned businesses with paid employees increased by 2.3 percent between 2002 and 2007. Likewise, the revenue of minority-owned firms with paid employees increased by 54.9 percent over that time, while revenue of white-owned firms increased by only 24.1 percent. In all previous surveys, the growth of minority-owned businesses was concentrated almost exclusively among businesses that did not have paid employees.
Still, for all this progress, the revenue of African-American firms is significantly lower than the revenue of nonminority business owners and even other minority business owners. According to Small Business Administration (SBA) data, 95 percent of African-American firms earn less than $10 million, compared to $20 million for nonminority businesses. And while average revenues for nonminority-owned firms were $5.2 million, the average for African-American-owned and Hispanic/Latino-owned firms were $2.5 million and $3.8 million respectively. Clearly, there is much room for improvement for minority entrepreneurship.
The Important Role of Government Contracting
Until the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the legislation that followed, minorities had encountered centuries of racial inequality in the United States. Segregation and Jim Crow laws meant that African-American-owned businesses were confined in their operations to the resources, consumers, financial institutions, and distribution networks that existed within the African-American community. As a result, the types of businesses that emerged were those that were compatible with an enclave economy—small-scale personal service and retail establishments, or “mom-and-pop” enterprises.
We agree that efforts to support minority business owners and entrepreneurial growth among minorities should be a national priority.
I'd like to add a couple missing components to the narrative you've articulated: high-growth entrepreneurship and private high-risk capital.
The data from 2007 on Black businesses are outdated due to the severe economic downturn and the rapid pace of the tech-based, knowledge-based Innovation Economy.
The word "minority" skews the current data, which is heavily skewed by Asian-American business owners who produced $2.5T in gross receipts compared to $137.5B produced by Black business owners. Asian-American businesses also employ half of employed minorities, according to the U.S. Commerce Secretary.
When it boils down to job creation, nearly all net new job growth is produced by firms less than five years old (Kauffman). That clearly points to private high-risk equity capital at play. The National Venture Capital Association claims that venture-backed companies produced 21% of GDP in 2008. That compares to less than 1% production from all 1.9 million Black-owned businesses.
When we mine the data, we see Black-owned employer companies are a fraction of the 1.9 million that existed in 2007. That number is far less today, though no credible data is out at this point. But the numbers are expected to be bleak.
The key points the data are showing are:
1. Blacks produce entrepreneurial ventures, but often rely upon very slow government funding options that typically come too slow and are too small to adequately grow small businesses.
2. Black entrepreneurs are severely under-represented in the fast-paced Innovation Economy across all industry sectors.
3. Black entrepreneurs do not have access to an infrastructure of private high-risk equity capital targeting Black populated geographic regions.
4. Blacks do not participate as SEC-qualified angel and venture capital investors to any appreciable degree.
5. High net worth Blacks are not being aggregated and galvanized to develop a comparable private capital investment infrastructure in like manner to the NVCA or the Angel Capital Association, which supports groups of investors determined to fund high-risk entrepreneurial ventures that create jobs and generate wealth.
6. Blacks are failing to find solutions outside of government, and failing to find solutions in ourselves.
7. The Innovation Economy is moving at such a rapid pace that any annual application to engage in a government process that is severely limited and extremely slow is death to any startup or small business attempting to compete for market share.
8. Competition by Black-owned businesses in the Innovation Economy will come from fast-paced startups supported by existing Black-owned business, corporations, foundations and private capital. Government contracts and options are on the check-off list for fast-growing companies, but cannot be made a priority of survival or the company will die.
9. Unemployment in Black America has remained twice the overall jobless rate since Dr. King was calling for jobs in the 60s in his message, the "Urgency of Now!" Nothing the government has done has changed that dynamic.
10. We all agree on the problem. The solution will be multi-facted. Your points about government options are well taken. But without the considerable engagement of the private sector and funding support for high-growth entrepreneurs in the Innovation Economy, Black America is doomed to repeat in this decade the mistakes of the last. And that, unfortunately, could potentially seal our fate in this century as a permanent underclass.
I agree, this issue is a national priority. But it is of no higher importance to anyone than Blacks. And yet, we have yet to elevate this issue to our highest priority. How then can we expect the majority racial demographic to take more seriously this issue than we do?
I applaud the CBC for engaging this issue. But let's face it, if a poll was taken in Black America today, we would find a severe ignorance regarding the true economic state of Black America. And we would find widespread apathy and lethargy. Even Black media fail to cover this issue of economic competitiveness effectively. Its not on our radar screen. And its a snooze fest if I mention private high-risk equity capital. Folks hver zero idea what that is, meanwhile it is the jet fuel that propels innovations like Google, Facebook, Huffington Post, Silicon Vally, BioTech, Healthcare, Energy systems and a broad variety of rapidly developing innovations, incubators and business accelerators.
Black folks aren't in the game. Much less competing.
And the worst part is we don't even know how the game is being played.
President Obama pointed to the private sector as the driver of job growth and wealth generation for the foreseeable future. That's quite a statement, especially given that Black folks aren't playing in that game to any appreciable degree.
So, how do we remedy that?
We start with us. Yeah. I don't see government picking up steam, nor concerned about helping us anymore than the past 40 years. And the results of that has been consistent high unemployment, low business productivity and a private investment infrastructure built around us that targeted regions for economic development in which we did not live. Today, the Innovation Economy exists all around us and we are disconnected from it. We can't even see it!
Government may have some pieces to the puzzle for economic advancement. But if we intend to engage and compete in the Innovation Economy, that initiative will start with us and be propelled by us. It will be our capital put at risk under our initiatives an guidelines. We will educate and train our own entrepreneurs and angel investment groups. We will develop our own infrastructure.
When Startup America started up, where were the Black partnerships? Where are they now?
Where's Kauffman in Black and Brown communities? It's the largest entrepreneur-focused think tank in the nation. Where's the Black equivalent?
Well, you see where I'm going with this response. We have to tap our own people if we expect to emerge economically in the 21st century any better than we fared in the 20th.
Jul 2, 2011, 3:44 AMPost a Comment
Thomas "Danny" Boston is a professor of economics in the School of Economics at Georgia Tech. He is also CEO of EuQuant, an economic consulting and research company, and serves as consultant to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.
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