Pittsburgh Is Among US Metros With The Lowest Rate Of Black-Owned Businesses: Here’s The Breakdown
Online lending marketplace LendingTree published a new study on places with the most Black-owned businesses in the United States, based on the US Census Bureau Annual Business Survey data.
Fayetteville, NC was found to have the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the US. Other metros in the South — including Washington, DC — join Fayetteville at the top of the list.
Pittsburgh, however, ranked the lowest out of the 50 American metros listed, with a mere 1.0% of small businesses being Black-owned — a percentage that falls below the national Black business ownership rate of 2.4%.
It found that in Pittsburgh, only 428 out of a total 41,379 businesses were Black-owned, a figure that put the province below San Diego, Providence, Seattle, and Phoenix in terms of Black-owned business percentage.
All of these metros, the report pointed out, also have Black population percentages that are lower than the national average of 12.8%. (The Pittsburgh metro’s population is 8% Black.) That means that the metros with the lowest percentage of Black-owned businesses also tended to have smaller Black populations.
The percentages in the LendingTree study for each place were calculated by finding the amount of Black-owned businesses within the total amount of businesses in a metro area. Business ownership was defined as anyone who has a stake of 50% or more in a company’s stock or equity.
Research also found that Black-owned businesses are more heavily concentrated in the health care and social assistance and transportation and warehousing industries.
A total of 36% of Black-owned businesses are in one of these two industries, with health care and social assistance making up the vast majority at 29.5%. Overall, 14.7% of businesses are in one of those two industries regardless of race.
Black-owned businesses are significantly more likely to be woman-owned than the national average, according to the report, which added that 35.4% of Black-owned businesses assessed are woman-owned, compared with 20.9% overall woman-owned businesses.
The full report is here:
