Minority-Owned Business Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Mia Scarlett | Last updated: August 18, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Minority-owned firms were 22.6% of the 5.9 million U.S. employer businesses in the most recent detailed Annual Business Survey, up from 18.3% four years earlier. They are the fastest-growing segment of American business formation and the segment least likely to be financed. Both statements come from federal data, and both are 2026 facts.
Quick Answer: How Many Minority-Owned Businesses Are There, and How Well Are They Financed?
There were approximately 1.3 million minority-owned employer businesses in the United States — 22.6% of all employer firms — according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 Annual Business Survey, covering reference year 2022. According to Axis Intelligence Research, Black-owned employer firms grew 56.2% between 2018 and 2022, the fastest expansion of any tracked group, while Black applicants at large banks received full approval on 16% of credit applications versus 48% for white applicants in the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Small Business Credit Survey.
Key Findings
- According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 Annual Business Survey, 1.3 million U.S. employer businesses — 22.6% of the national total — were minority-owned in reference year 2022.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the minority-owned share of U.S. employer firms rose 4.3 percentage points between 2018 and 2022, from 18.3% to 22.6%.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Black-owned employer businesses grew from 124,551 to 194,585 between 2018 and 2022, a 56.2% increase and an 11.8% compound annual rate.
- According to the Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 Report on Employer Firms, 42% of small business financing applicants received the full amount they sought, 36% received some or most, and 22% received none.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, Black-owned employer firms score 46.5 on the Capital Access Parity Index (CAPI), meaning they operate at under half the credit-access parity of white-owned firms on the two dimensions the index measures, as of the 2025 survey year.
How Many Minority-Owned Businesses Are in the U.S.?
The number that matters is the employer-firm count, because employer firms are the ones that hire, borrow, and appear in lending data. Census counted approximately 5.9 million U.S. employer firms in reference year 2022, of which 1.3 million were minority-owned.
Census defines minority-owned narrowly and consistently: any race and ethnicity combination other than non-Hispanic and White. Firms that are equally minority- and nonminority-owned are tabulated separately, not folded in. That definition is why the numbers here will not match aggregator tallies that blend employer and nonemployer businesses.
Minority-Owned Share of U.S. Employer Firms, 2018–2022
| Reference year | Minority-owned employer firms | Share of all employer firms | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | ~1.0 million | 18.3% | U.S. Census Bureau, 2019 Annual Business Survey |
| 2019 | ~1.1 million | 18.7% | U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Annual Business Survey |
| 2020 | ~1.15 million | 19.9% | U.S. Census Bureau, 2021 Annual Business Survey |
| 2021 | ~1.2 million | 21.0% | U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Annual Business Survey |
| 2022 | ~1.3 million | 22.6% | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 Annual Business Survey |
According to Axis Intelligence Research, that is a 4.3-percentage-point gain in four reference years — a faster shift in the composition of the employer-firm base than any comparable four-year stretch the Annual Business Survey has published.
Mia Scarlett: The share number moves slowly by construction, because the denominator is 5.9 million firms and barely budges. A 4.3-point move against a fixed denominator means the numerator did the work. It did: the minority-owned employer count added roughly 300,000 firms while the total employer base was flat. That is not a rising-tide story. That is one segment growing while the rest stands still.
Minority-Owned Employer Firms by Race and Ethnicity, Reference Year 2022
| Group | Employer firms | Annual receipts | Employees | Annual payroll | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 650,680 | $1.2 trillion | Not published in release | Not published in release | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 ABS |
| Hispanic | 465,202 | $653.5 billion | 3.6 million | $143.2 billion | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 ABS |
| Black or African American | 194,585 | $211.8 billion | 1.6 million | $61.2 billion | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 ABS |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 47,519 | $78.5 billion | 333,153 | $14.6 billion | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 ABS |
| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander | 9,552 | $13.8 billion | 68,795 | $3.2 billion | U.S. Census Bureau, 2023 ABS |
Two cells above are marked as not published rather than filled. The December 2024 Census release stated Asian-owned firm counts and receipts but did not state employment and payroll for that group in the same release, and Axis Intelligence Research does not carry a figure forward from an earlier reference year to complete a table.
Source: Axis Intelligence Research — CC BY 4.0
Which Minority-Owned Business Segment Is Growing Fastest?
Growth rates separate sharply once the counts are put on a common base.
| Group | Period | Start | End | Total growth | Compound annual rate | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Indian and Alaska Native | 2019–2022 | 26,064 | 47,519 | 82.3% | 22.2% | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Black or African American | 2018–2022 | 124,551 | 194,585 | 56.2% | 11.8% | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Hispanic | 2017–2022 | 322,076 | 465,202 | 44.4% | 7.6% | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Asian | 2018–2022 | 577,835 | 650,680 | 12.6% | 3.0% | Axis Intelligence Research calculation on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
The single-year picture is sharper still. Black-owned employer firms grew 20.8% between reference years 2021 and 2022; Hispanic-owned firms grew 14.6%; Asian-owned firms grew 1.2%; and American Indian and Alaska Native-owned firms fell 2.2% after three years of rapid gains.
The American Indian and Alaska Native series carries a scope note: the base is small, the 2019–2021 jump is unusually steep, and the 2022 reading reverses part of it. Treat the compound rate as a description of a volatile series rather than a trend line.
Mia Scarlett: Strip out the compound-rate framing and read the counts. Asian-owned firms added about 7,700 firms in a year on a base of 643,000. Black-owned firms added about 33,600 on a base of 161,000. Those are different phases of the same category. One is a mature segment growing with the economy; the other is a formation wave. Lenders underwrite them identically, which is most of the problem in the next section.
Minority Women-Owned Firms: The Fastest-Moving Sub-Segment
The Census Bureau’s 2024 Annual Business Survey, reporting reference year 2023, found that the number of minority women-owned employer firms grew 49.8% between 2017 and 2023. Over the same period, women-owned employer businesses overall rose from 1,134,549 to 1,356,990, and female veteran-owned employer firms grew 25.7%.
That 49.8% figure is the single highest growth rate the Census Bureau published for any ownership sub-segment in that release, and it sits inside the same population that reports the sharpest financing friction.
How Do Minority-Owned Businesses Perform on Revenue and Employment?
Per-firm scale is where the receipts totals become useful. According to Axis Intelligence Research, dividing reference-year-2022 receipts by firm counts produces the following, using Census-rounded inputs and therefore reported to three significant figures.
| Group | Receipts per firm | Receipts per employee | Payroll per employee | Employees per firm | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | ~$1.84 million | Not calculable | Not calculable | Not calculable | Axis Intelligence Research on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| American Indian and Alaska Native | ~$1.65 million | ~$236,000 | ~$43,800 | 7.0 | Axis Intelligence Research on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander | ~$1.44 million | ~$201,000 | ~$46,500 | 7.2 | Axis Intelligence Research on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Hispanic | ~$1.40 million | ~$182,000 | ~$39,800 | 7.7 | Axis Intelligence Research on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
| Black or African American | ~$1.09 million | ~$132,000 | ~$38,250 | 8.2 | Axis Intelligence Research on U.S. Census Bureau ABS |
Formula: receipts per firm = total annual receipts ÷ employer firm count, both from the same Census release and the same reference year. Receipts per employee and payroll per employee use the employment and payroll figures from that release. Asian-owned rows are not calculable because employment and payroll were not stated in the release.
Mia Scarlett: Black-owned employer firms carry the most employees per firm and the least revenue per employee — 8.2 heads producing about $132,000 each, against 7.0 heads producing about $236,000 each at American Indian and Alaska Native-owned firms. Revenue per employee is the number a credit committee actually looks at, because it is the closest single proxy for whether payroll is affordable out of operations. A firm at $132,000 per head in a labor-heavy sector is not a weak business. It is a business whose sector mix — health care and social assistance is the largest single sector for Black-owned firms, at 25.6% of them — puts it on the wrong side of a ratio that underwriting treats as a risk signal.
What Are the Loan Approval Rates for Minority-Owned Businesses?
Two federal sources measure this, they measure different populations, and Axis Intelligence Research publishes both rather than merging them.
The Census Baseline: All Employer Firms
The Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey asks employer firms whether they applied for new credit. Its February 2026 analysis of reference-year-2023 data found that 13.0% of employer firms applied for new credit, down from 14.3% in 2020. Among all employer firms, 57.2% received all the credit they applied for in 2023, up from 54.9% three years earlier; 25.1% received some; and 7.2% received none, down from 10.8%.
Banks tightened their grip on the channel over the same period: 73.1% of credit-seeking employer firms went to a bank in 2023, up from 67.2% in 2020, while the residual “other sources” category collapsed from 19.1% to 9.3%.
The Federal Reserve Baseline: Small Employer Firms
The Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 Report on Employer Firms, drawn from the 2025 Small Business Credit Survey, surveyed 6,525 small employer firms between September 3 and November 14, 2025. Sixty percent applied for financing. Of those applicants, 42% received the full amount sought, 36% received some or most, and 22% received none.
The two figures — Census at 57.2% fully approved, the Fed at 42% — are not in conflict and should not be averaged. Census surveys all employer firms including large ones and asks about new credit in a calendar year; the Fed surveys firms with 1–499 employees using a weighted convenience sample and asks about all financing applications in a rolling 12 months. Axis Intelligence Research reports them side by side because the spread between them is itself the finding: the smaller the firm population you measure, the worse the financing outcome.
Outcomes by Race and Ethnicity of Owner
The 2025 Small Business Credit Survey is the only annual instrument that breaks credit outcomes out by owner race and ethnicity at national scale, weighted to Census Annual Business Survey population distributions. Its 2026 Firms in Focus chartbook on race and ethnicity of ownership drew on 4,673 white-owned, 712 Black-owned, 695 Hispanic-owned, 375 Asian-owned, and 70 American Indian or Alaska Native-owned employer firm responses.
| Metric, 2025 survey year | Black-owned | Hispanic-owned | Asian-owned | AIAN-owned | White-owned | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full approval at large banks | 16% | Not published | Not published | Not published | 48% | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
| Received nothing at large banks | 48% | Not published | Not published | Not published | Not published | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
| Discouraged: did not apply, expected denial | 32% | 21% | Not published | Not published | 8% | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
| Denial attributed to low credit score | 55% | 42% | 31% | Not published | Not published | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
| Operating at a loss, end of 2024 | 47% | 41% | 38% | 58% | 32% | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
| Expect revenue increase, next 12 months | 74% | 64% | Not published | 61% | 57% | Federal Reserve Banks, 2026 SBCS |
The large-bank and denial-reason rows above are drawn from the National Bankers Association’s published analysis of the 2026 Small Business Credit Survey; the underlying data are the Federal Reserve Banks’. The discouragement, loss-operation, and revenue-expectation rows are stated in the Federal Reserve’s own chartbook. Cells marked as not published are cells the survey suppressed or did not report, most often because the subgroup sample fell below the Federal Reserve’s 50-observation threshold.
Mia Scarlett: The row that reframes the whole file is discouragement, not approval. A 32% discouragement rate among Black-owned nonapplicants against 8% among white-owned nonapplicants means the demand data is censored before underwriting ever runs. Approval statistics only describe firms that applied. If four times as many owners in one group decide in advance not to apply, then every published approval rate for that group is measured on a self-selected, unusually confident sample — which means the true access gap is wider than the approval gap shows, not narrower. This is the number the summary skipped.
The Capital Access Parity Index (CAPI)
Approval rates describe what happens after an application. Discouragement describes whether an application happens at all. Axis Intelligence Research built the Capital Access Parity Index (CAPI) to hold both in one number.
What CAPI measures. CAPI expresses how close a minority-owned segment comes to white-owned parity on credit access, on a 0–100 scale where 100 is full parity. It is not an approval rate and should not be read as one.
Formula.
CAPI = 100 × [ (0.50 × demand parity) + (0.50 × capacity parity) ]
demand parity = white-owned discouragement rate ÷ group discouragement rate
capacity parity = white-owned loss-operation rate ÷ group loss-operation rate
Both components are inverted ratios, because for both inputs a lower value is the better outcome. Equal weights are used so that any reader can recompute the score from the published inputs without a proprietary step.
Inputs, 2025 survey year (Federal Reserve Banks, Small Business Credit Survey).
| Input | Black-owned | Hispanic-owned | White-owned (baseline) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discouragement rate among nonapplicants | 32% | 21% | 8% |
| Share operating at a loss, end of 2024 | 47% | 41% | 32% |
| Demand parity | 0.2500 | 0.3810 | 1.0000 |
| Capacity parity | 0.6809 | 0.7805 | 1.0000 |
| CAPI score | 46.5 | 58.1 | 100.0 |
Readings, as of the 2025 survey year (snapshot date: March 3, 2026).
- Black-owned employer firms: 46.5
- Hispanic-owned employer firms: 58.1
- White-owned employer firms: 100.0 (baseline by construction)
How to read a CAPI score. Above 80, the segment is close enough to parity that residual differences plausibly track firm age, sector, and revenue scale. Between 55 and 80, a structural access gap is present but demand-side behavior is not the dominant driver. Below 55, discouragement is suppressing credit demand faster than approval outcomes alone can explain, and approval-rate reporting will understate the real gap.
Black-owned firms at 46.5 sit in that third band. Hispanic-owned firms at 58.1 sit at the bottom of the second: their loss-operation parity of 0.7805 is respectable, and it is discouragement, at a parity of 0.3810, that pulls the composite down.
Scope note. CAPI is scored for the two segments where the 2026 Small Business Credit Survey publishes a white comparator on both inputs. Asian-owned and American Indian or Alaska Native-owned firms are not scored because the discouragement input was suppressed for those groups at the published sample sizes. Both inputs come from the same survey instrument, the same fielding window, and the same weighting scheme, which is the condition Axis Intelligence Research requires before combining figures into a single index.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the separate large-bank approval parity for Black-owned firms — 16% full approval against 48% for white-owned applicants — is 33.3 on the same 0–100 scale. It is reported alongside CAPI rather than inside it, because the Federal Reserve does not publish the matching value for Hispanic-owned applicants and a component that exists for one segment and not the other would break the comparison the index is built to make.
Where Do Minority-Owned Businesses Get Financing?
Channel choice has moved decisively over five survey years, and it moved toward the most expensive option. The share of small business credit applicants who applied at online fintech lenders rose from 17% in the 2020 survey to 29% in the 2025 survey, according to the Federal Reserve Banks.
That shift carries a measurable price. Sixty percent of firms that borrowed from online lenders reported that actual borrowing costs came in higher than expected, against 37% at small banks and 32% at large banks. Applicants at small banks were the most likely to be fully approved, at 57%.
Among all small employer firms, 46% of denied or partially approved applicants said lender requirements were too strict — the most common single reason given.
Mia Scarlett: Put the two facts together. Large banks fully approve 48% of white applicants and 16% of Black applicants. Small banks fully approve 57% of everyone who reaches them. The lender type with the best approval odds is the one with the thinnest branch network in the neighborhoods where the formation wave is happening. That is a distribution problem wearing the costume of a credit problem, and it is why community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions keep appearing in the policy conversation. Meanwhile the channel that grew — online lenders, from 17% to 29% of applicants — is the one where three in five borrowers found out the price after signing.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure in this article was retrieved from a primary source during production on August 18, 2026, and logged with its URL and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. No figure was carried from model memory or from an aggregator.
Sources. U.S. Census Bureau Annual Business Survey press releases and America Counts analyses for firm counts, receipts, employment, payroll, and all-employer-firm credit outcomes. Federal Reserve Banks Small Business Credit Survey — the 2026 Report on Employer Firms and the 2026 Firms in Focus chartbook on race and ethnicity of ownership — for financing applications, outcomes, discouragement, and profitability by owner race and ethnicity.
Reference years. Annual Business Survey figures are labelled by reference year, not release year. The 2023 ABS covers reference year 2022 and was released December 19, 2024; it remains the most recent release carrying full race-and-ethnicity detail on counts, receipts, employment, and payroll. The 2024 ABS covers reference year 2023; its published growth comparisons for women-owned, minority women-owned, and veteran-owned firms are used here and dated accordingly.
Axis calculations. Growth rates, compound annual rates, per-firm and per-employee ratios, percentage-point changes, and all CAPI components were computed in Python from the sourced inputs and are flagged axis_calculated = yes in the CSV, each with a method note. Per-firm and per-employee ratios are reported to three significant figures because the Census receipts inputs are themselves rounded.
Figures not merged. Census and Federal Reserve credit outcomes measure different populations with different instruments and are reported side by side rather than reconciled. Where a subgroup value was suppressed or not stated in a source release, the cell reads “Not published” rather than being estimated.
Definitions. Census classifies minority-owned firms as any race and ethnicity combination other than non-Hispanic and White; firms equally minority- and nonminority-owned are tabulated separately. The Small Business Credit Survey uses mutually exclusive labels indicating more than 50% ownership by owners of the given race or ethnicity, with “White” including non-Hispanic white, Middle Eastern, and North African owners. The Small Business Credit Survey is a weighted convenience sample, not a probability sample.
About This Dataset
Contents. Minority-owned business counts, receipts, employment, payroll, growth rates, credit application and approval outcomes, discouragement rates, and Capital Access Parity Index components for the United States, covering Annual Business Survey reference years 2017–2023 and Small Business Credit Survey years 2020–2025.
Format. UTF-8 CSV, one row per observation, with full source provenance on every row: value, unit, as-of date, geography, segment, source organization, source document, source URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag, method note, and data type.
License. CC BY 4.0. Free to reuse, redistribute, and build on with attribution.
Citation format. Axis Intelligence Research, Minority-Owned Business Statistics 2026, 2026.
Cite This Research
APA Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Minority-owned business statistics 2026: Growth, revenue, and the credit access gap. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/minority-owned-business-statistics/
MLA Axis Intelligence Research. “Minority-Owned Business Statistics 2026: Growth, Revenue, and the Credit Access Gap.” Axis Intelligence, 18 Aug. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/minority-owned-business-statistics/.
Chicago Axis Intelligence Research. “Minority-Owned Business Statistics 2026: Growth, Revenue, and the Credit Access Gap.” Axis Intelligence, August 18, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/minority-owned-business-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Census “minority-owned” count include businesses with no employees?
No. The Annual Business Survey covers employer firms only — businesses with at least one paid employee, filing 941, 944, or 1120 tax forms. Nonemployer businesses are counted separately, in Nonemployer Statistics, where the Census Bureau recorded 30,427,808 nonemployer establishments in 2023. Any figure claiming several million minority-owned businesses is combining the two universes, which is defensible only if the source says so.
Why does the minority-owned firm count differ from the sum of the individual race and ethnicity groups?
Because the groups are not mutually exclusive in the Annual Business Survey the way they are in the Small Business Credit Survey, and because Hispanic ownership is an ethnicity that cuts across race categories. Adding Asian, Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander counts double-counts some firms. Use the published minority-owned total, not a sum.
What counts as a discouraged borrower, and why does it matter to a lender?
A discouraged borrower is a firm that needed financing and did not apply because it expected to be turned down. It matters because discouraged firms never enter the application pipeline, so they are invisible in approval statistics and in Community Reinvestment Act performance data. At a 32% discouragement rate among Black-owned nonapplicants against 8% among white-owned nonapplicants, a lender reading only its own approval file is reading a heavily filtered market.
Is the approval gap explained by credit score alone?
Credit score is the most-cited denial reason among Black-owned firms, at 55%, against 42% for Hispanic-owned and 31% for Asian-owned firms. But the Federal Reserve publishes these shares as aggregate percentages that are not adjusted for profitability, credit risk, firm age, or other creditworthiness indicators. The survey documents what applicants were told; it does not settle how much of the gap survives controls.
Which lender type gives minority-owned firms the best approval odds?
On the published national figures, small banks: 57% of their applicants were fully approved, higher than any other source. Online lenders grew fastest as a channel, from 17% to 29% of applicants across five survey years, and 60% of their borrowers reported borrowing costs above expectations, against 37% at small banks.
How is the Capital Access Parity Index different from an approval rate?
An approval rate measures outcomes for firms that applied. CAPI combines a demand-side input — the rate at which owners decline to apply because they expect denial — with a capacity-side input, the share of firms operating at a loss, and expresses both against a white-owned baseline of 100. A segment can post a tolerable approval rate and still score poorly on CAPI if enough of its owners never reach the application stage.
Are minority-owned businesses growing faster than the overall business base?
Yes, and by a wide margin. The total U.S. employer firm base was approximately 5.9 million in both reference year 2021 and reference year 2022, while minority-owned firms rose from about 1.2 million to about 1.3 million and their share moved from 21.0% to 22.6%. Black-owned employer firms alone grew 20.8% in that single year.
Why do minority-owned firms show lower revenue per employee?
Sector composition explains much of it. Health care and social assistance is the single largest sector for Black-owned employer firms, at 25.6% of them in reference year 2022 — a labor-intensive sector where revenue per employee is structurally lower than in capital-intensive industries. Revenue per employee is a sector characteristic before it is a performance characteristic, which is a distinction underwriting models do not always make.
What data will change these numbers next?
Three releases. The Census Bureau’s next Annual Business Survey detail release, carrying race and ethnicity breakdowns for a newer reference year. The Federal Reserve’s next Report on Employer Firms and its Firms in Focus chartbook on race and ethnicity of ownership, typically published in the first quarter. And any Census America Counts analysis extending the Annual Business Survey credit module to owner demographics, which would give the first federal cross-check on the Small Business Credit Survey’s approval gaps.