Black-owned employer businesses are reaching new heights, but a new Brookings Institution report says the U.S. is still leaving enormous economic potential on the table.
In “The Shifting Landscape for Black-Owned Businesses: An Update to the Black Business Parity Dashboard,” researchers found that Black-owned employer firms surpassed 200,000 for the first time in 2023 after at least six consecutive years of growth. According to the report, those businesses generated $249 billion in revenue, supported more than 1.8 million jobs, and paid $69.8 billion in annual wages.
Despite that progress, Brookings found that Black entrepreneurs remain substantially underrepresented among employer businesses. While Black Americans accounted for 14.4% of the U.S. population in 2023, they owned only 3.3% of employer businesses. The report’s updated Black Business Parity Dashboard models what local economies could look like if Black-owned employer businesses matched the Black share of the population in metropolitan areas across the country. Under that scenario, the United States could gain approximately 757,000 additional Black-owned employer businesses, 6.3 million new jobs, and $824 billion in annual business revenue, along with billions of dollars in additional payroll.
Brookings also highlighted continued momentum in Black entrepreneurship
. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, the nation added roughly 6,300 Black-owned employer firms, creating an estimated 238,000 new jobs, generating $37 billion in additional revenue, and paying $8.6 billion more in wages than the previous year. However, researchers noted that the pace of growth slowed compared with earlier post-pandemic gains.Regionally, 116 metropolitan areas experienced growth in Black-owned employer businesses between 2017 and 2023. Major metropolitan areas, including Atlanta, Miami, New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, recorded some of the largest increases in Black employer firms during that period. Still, the report found that no major metro area has yet achieved parity between its share of Black-owned employer businesses and its Black population.
According to Brookings, longstanding barriers—including unequal access to credit, capital, and intergenerational wealth-building opportunities—continue to limit Black entrepreneurs’ ability to start and scale their businesses. Previous Brookings research found Black Americans score above the national average on entrepreneurial traits associated with business success, suggesting that the ownership gap reflects structural barriers rather than a lack of entrepreneurial potential.
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