The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data detailing the demographics of business owners in the United States, including sex, race, ethnicity, and veteran status. For the first time, this release includes estimates of employer firms by owner characteristics, industry sector, and congressional district.
Data for this release are sourced from the Annual Business Survey (ABS), which covers businesses with paid employees, and the Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D), which covers businesses without paid employees. Combined, these datasets offer a comprehensive overview of business ownership across the country.
According to figures for 2023, there were 36.4 million employer and nonemployer businesses in the U.S., generating $50 trillion in receipts. Women owned 14.2 million businesses with $2.8 trillion in receipts, while veterans owned 1.6 million businesses accounting for $1 trillion in receipts.
The 2024 ABS reports that there were about 5.9 million employer firms in reference year 2023. Of these firms, women owned approximately 1.4 million (22.9%) and veterans owned around 261,000 (4.4%).
Demographic breakdowns reveal that White-owned firms comprised 80.6% (4.8 million) of employer businesses with $17 trillion in receipts; Asian-owned firms represented 11.5% (685,000) with $1.2 trillion; Hispanic-owned accounted for 8.4% (496,000) with $730.3 billion; Black or African American-owned made up 3.4% (201,000) with $249 billion; American Indian or Alaska Native-owned comprised 0.9% (55,000) with $70.8 billion; and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander-owned represented 0.2% (9,000) with $13.1 billion.
The ABS is sponsored by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) and is conducted jointly with the Census Bureau to measure research and development activities among microbusinesses as well as innovation trends.
For nonemployer businesses—those without paid employees—the NES-D shows there were about 30.4 million such entities generating $1.8 trillion in receipts during 2023: women owned nearly half at 12.9 million (42.3%) producing $423 billion in receipts; veteran-owned nonemployers totaled about 1.4 million (4.5%), contributing $65.7 billion.
Further highlights indicate that White-owned nonemployer businesses made up roughly three-quarters of this segment at 73.6% (22.4 million), bringing in $1.3 trillion; Hispanic-owned accounted for 17.5% (5.3 million) at $244 billion; Black or African American-owned stood at 14.4% (4 .4 million), reporting receipts of $128 .7 billion; Asian -owned made up nine percent(2 .8million ),with$163 .6billion ;American Indian or Alaska Native–owned was at one percent(378 ,000 ),bringing$15 .5billion ;Native Hawaiian & Other Pacific Islander–owned reached0 .3%(102 ,000 )and$4 .4billion .
This release also provides data on urban versus rural classification of business owners as well as information on firm size by receipts and legal structure such as sole proprietorships or partnerships.
The NES-D uses administrative records combined with decennial census data to link demographic details to all qualifying nonemployer businesses—defined as those filing federal income tax returns showing annual receipts above $1 ,000 .
No additional news release accompanied this product.
