Hispanic businesses boom

Many news outlets picked up the U.S. Census released a report yesterday on the growth of Hispanic-owned businesses.

The report said the number of Hispanic-owned businesses grew 31 percent between 1997 and 2002 — three times the national average for all businesses. The report — called Survey of Business Owners: Hispanic-Owned Firms: 2002 — said nearly 1.6 million Hispanic-owned businesses generated nearly $222 billion in revenue, up 19 percent from 1997.

Other highlights:

-- In 2002, nearly 3-in-10 Hispanic-owned firms operated in construction and other services, such as personal services, and repair and maintenance.
-- In 2002, Mexican-owned firms accounted for more than 44 percent of all of them.
-- There were 29,184 Hispanic-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more.
-- There were 1,510 Hispanic-owned firms with 100 employees or more, generating more than $42 billion in gross receipts.
-- States with the fastest rates of growth for Hispanic-owned firms between 1997 and 2002 included New York (57 percent), Rhode Island and Georgia (56 percent each), Nevada and South Carolina (48 percent each).

The boom in the service sector in places like Rhode Island and Georgia tells me that Hispanics are largely responding to the rapidly-growing Hispanic population in areas not generally thought of as huge Hispanic areas (like, say, a NYC or Miami).

Just like Goya started decades ago to fill a void for "food from home" for mass Puerto Rican migration, these Hispanics (like other minority groups) are setting the example in terms of filling a real need for general market companies to follow.