Entrepreneurship in the US

Tortillas outsell Wonder Bread. The Census Department released a report showing the dynamic growth of business owned by Hispanics. Those businesses grew by 31% between 1997 and 2002 - they numbered 1.6 million and brought in $222 billion in revenue. California, Texas, Florida and New York are the states where those firms are growing at the fastest rate but behind them are Rhode Island, Georgia, Nevada and South Carolina.

A 1997 report in the same area by the Census Bureau found that on the whole Hispanic owned business were generally smaller (for example average receipts across all industries were $155,000 versus $891,000 for HOBs). At the same time the dispersion of business enterprises was pretty good. They amounted to 5.8% of all businesses in the US but about 1% of the total receipts. The metropolitan areas with the highest numbers of Hispanic owned businesses were in LA-Long Beach, Miami, New York, Houston, Riverside-San Bernardino, San Antonio, Orange County(CA), Chicago and Dallas. Seven of the top 20 regions in the country were in California. The largest concentration of owners were of Mexican heritage although the highest grossing firms in terms of receipts were Cuban. The differential on Mexican owned firms was closing rapidly.

The most recent report is available at the Census Bureau Site