Hispanic Businesses

According to a study conducted last year by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), commissioned by the Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles (LBC-GLA), Hispanic-owned businesses are the key to creating jobs and income in the U.S. economy. The LBC-GLA is a non-profit organization created in 2008 to gather and organize business owners of Hispanic origin in order to, among other things, advocate for small and medium businesses, provide valuable and permanent services to its members to improve and achieve success in their businesses, and generate more business opportunities from outside the Latino community and among members.

The results of the study show the need for technical assistance programs in areas such as marketing, business plan development,accounting, information technology and tax preparation. There is also a need for banks to provide the means to enable these businesses to grow and invest. However, “The numbers are encouraging and the study’s findings are consistent with our mission to provide technical assistance, promote economic growth and produce economic structures and policy initiatives needed to empower Latino businesses,” said Jorge Corralejo, President and CEO of LBC-GLA.

Additional data:

• In 2002, nearly 3 out of 10 Hispanic-owned businesses operated in the construction and services area such as personal services, repair and maintenance.
• In 2002, businesses owned by people of Mexican origin accounted for more than 44% of all Hispanic businesses.
• The retail and wholesale trade accounted for 36% of the income of Hispanic-owned businesses.
• There were 29,184 Hispanic-owned businesses with one million dollars or more in revenue.
• There were 1510 Hispanic businesses with 100 employees or more, worth over 42 billion U.S. dollars in gross income.
• The states with the fastest growth rates for Hispanic-owned businesses between 1997 and 2002 included New York (57%), Rhode Island and Georgia (56%), Nevada and South Carolina (48%).
• The counties with the largest number of Hispanic-owned businesses were Los Angeles, California (188,472), the Miami-Dade, Florida (163,188), Harris, Texas (61,934) and the Bronx, New York (38,325).

Online Help

There are numerous resources in many websites devoted specifically to Latin American business. SCORE (Counselors to America’s Small Business) provides a list of sites for “minority bushiness, among which are the following:

• Hispanic Business Women’s Alliance “, which contains a directory of businesses owned by Hispanic women;
• Hispanicsmb.com, has forums, blogs, news and more;
• Latin Business Association, whose mission is” to build economic wealth and opportunities for Hispanic entrepreneurs “
• Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of the United States, which provides information on conferences and seminars, news, legislation and other resources.

Additional websites

• LatinoBiz.org, with a map search box in the Latino Business, information about the chambers of commerce in different regions and events;
• The web site of the Latino Business Chamber of Southern California (CELATINOS), an nonpartisan nonprofit association that offers training seminars and various conferences and
• HispanicBusiness.com magazine that, in addition to offering stories, information, job offers and more, you can search businesses by state, city and name or category in the “Hispanic Business 500 Directory.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 8:12 am and is filed under Latino. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.