Who owns Chicago businesses?

Who owns Chicago businesses?

By John Pletz 

Source:  chicagobusiness.com

The Chicago business landscape looks a lot more like the nation's overall than those of some other big cities.

Just 18 percent of Chicago-area businesses are owned by minorities, according to a new survey of entrepreneurs by the U.S. Census Bureau. That's equal to the nation overall. But it trails Los Angeles, where minorities own 37 percent of businesses; New York City, at 26 percent, and Houston, at 31 percent. Philadelphia, the nation's fifth-largest city and whose demographics most closely mirror Chicago's, has 15 percent minority business ownership.

Silicon Valley had the highest minority business ownership, at 39 percent, the Census Bureau says.

Although 54 percent of residents in the Chicago metro area are white, 80 percent of its businesses are white-owned, according to a census survey done in 2014. That tracks the nation as a whole, in which whites are 62 percent of residents but 82 percent of business owners.

Los Angeles' population is just 30 percent white, but whites own 65 percent of businesses. In New York, white are 47 percent of the residents and 73 percent of business owners.

Hispanics, the largest minority group in Chicago, at 22 percent of the population, own 6 percent of businesses. In Los Angeles, Hispanics make up just 10 percent of business owners, despite being 45 percent of the population.

Blacks account for 17 percent of the population in Chicago but just 2 percent of business ownership. The trend is remarkably consistent elsewhere: 2 percent ownership in New York and 16 percent of population, and 3 percent in Houston, where 17 percent of the population is African-American. In Philadelphia, blacks are 20 percent of the population and 2 percent of business owners.

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