“Where’s the Black grocery stores?”
It’s a question I’m asked on the radio regularly as our African-American community sees retail stores aimed at Indy’s 125,000 Hispanics. Blacks ask where’s the Black-owned retailers serving Indy’s 326,000 Blacks?
The question partly comes from economic naiveté; an assumption that if a retailer has Spanish signs and mostly Hispanic workers; the business must be Hispanic-owned.
So, I was glad for last week’s release of preliminary data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) as part of the massive 2012 Economic Census. The Census SBO details privately owned American businesses by the race, ethnicity and gender of the owners.
Last week’s data release was national and state data. Data on local communities like Indianapolis won’t be released until December.
First off, despite the Great Recession, the number of Indiana’s Black-owned businesses increased – a jump of 54.5 percent. The revenues generated by Indiana’s Black-owned businesses climbed from $2.287 billion in 2007 to $4.179 billion in 2012.
The number of Hoosier Black-owned businesses owned by women nearly doubled from 11,630 in 2007 to 22,542 in 2012. Businesses owned by Black men increased 25.9 percent from 8,812 to 11,095.
The number of Black-owned Indiana businesses with employees modestly increased 5.7 percent. While that number is just 3.9 percent of all Hoosier Black-owned businesses, those few generate $3,616 billion in revenue; 86.5 percent of all Black-owned business revenue.
You can see by the figures, the vast majority of Black-owned businesses in Indiana (and the U.S.) are sole proprietorships.
Nationally, in 2012, there were 2,593,168 Black-owned businesses; up from 1,921,864 in 2007. The revenues generated by Black-owned business rose from $135.7 billion in 2007 to $187.6 billion in 2012.
Indiana’s increase in Black-owned businesses between 2007 and 2012 outpaced the 34.9 percent increase in Black-owned businesses nationally. And the revenue growth of our state’s Black-owned enterprises far outpaces, percentage wise, the nation 82.8 percent here vs. 38.2 percent nationally.
The recent grocery store crisis in Indy raised questions about Black-owned retail businesses. According to the 2012 Census SBO, retail businesses comprise just 5.7 percent of Indiana’s Black-owned businesses, close to the 6.2 percent of Black-owned businesses nationwide.
In Indiana, over a third of Black-owned businesses are categorized by the SBO as “other” in categories outside the 18 major business categories surveyed.
In the major categories, 6,925 of Black-owned businesses are in health care industries; administrative and support; waste management and remediation services; professional, scientific, and technical services; retail sales; transportation and warehousing; arts entertainment recreation; and construction.
While overall revenue for Black-owned businesses in Indiana increased $1.893 billion between 2007 and 2012; there are some disturbing news in the Census SBO data as Black-owned business revenue in some key categories declined between 2007 and 2012.
Construction business revenues fell; retail sales declined; transportation was down; and finance was down.
Categories where Black-owned Indiana business revenues grew: wholesale trade; professional services; administrative services; educational services; and health care.
The biggest jump in revenue of Indiana Black-owned businesses in the 2012 preliminary Census SBO is in manufacturing.
The 2007 Census SBO reported Indiana’s Black-owned manufacturing businesses generated $109.9 million in revenue. In 2012 that jumped to a stunning $1.556 billion.
Increases of that magnitude means several Hoosier Black-owned manufacturing businesses are doing big business.
In 2012, Black Enterprise listed only one Black-owned Indiana manufacturing firm, Millennium Steel, with revenues just over $200 million. Skeptical about the data, I asked Carolyn Mosby, president/CEO of Mid-States Regional Minority Supplier Development Council about the data. Based on her knowledge of the state’s minority businesses, Mosby feels the manufacturing figure is in the ballpark.
The decline in Black-owned business revenue in construction and transportation businesses statewide, leads to my fear that when data for Indianapolis is released in December, we’ll see the Ballard Administration’s policies, in reality, did not really benefit Black-owned businesses.
But, back to this column’s first sentence, about the “ethnicity” of grocery and retail stores.
The 2012 Census SBO reported a total of 479,059 businesses owners in Indiana. Of that number 7.1 percent are African-American; 2.8 percent are Hispanic-owned businesses; 2.6 percent are Asian-owned. Again, all statewide.
And about retail business? Statewide, there are just 1,934 Black-owned retail businesses; 1,228 Hispanic-owned and 1,493 Asian-owned. But of retail businesses with employees, 169 are Hispanic-owned, 895 Asian-owned and just 74 Black-owned.
Despite the preliminary tag, there’s vibrancy in some areas of Indiana Black-owned businesses. We’ll see what the final data shows at year’s end, especially for the state of Black-owned business in Indiana’s largest African-American community.
See ‘ya next week!
You can email comments to acbrown@aol.com.
