Charting Black-Owned Businesses in Metro Atlanta

As Black History Month draws to a close, we here at 33N are dedicating a post to Black-owned businesses in the Metro Atlanta area, as they play a critical role in the local economy. Indeed, LendingTree recently dubbed Atlanta the “nation’s hub” for Black-owned businesses. And these businesses are thriving. According to a recent article in the AJC, metro area Black-owned employer firms (defined as businesses with more than one employee) increased by nearly 25% from 2020 to 2021, and at over 50% from 2017 to 2021, the largest growth rate of any racial group.

Nationally, Brookings Metro recently reported that Black-owned businesses jumped 14.3% from 2020 to 2021 but notes that the overall national share of Black-owned businesses (2.7%) still lags well behind the Black population as a share of the total population (14.4%).

In this post, we will look at a side-by-side comparison (nationally and locally) of Black-owned businesses as a share of total businesses by industry sector. The data for this visualization comes from the Census Bureau’s Annual Business Survey for 2022.

The following interactive chart provides three different “views” on Black business ownership nationally and locally: (1) Black-owned firms as a percent of total firms by sector, (2) employees of Black-owned firms as a percent of total employees by sector, and (3) annual payroll of Black-owned firms as a percent of total annual payroll by sector. You can toggle through these “views” by using the gray dropdown menu below the chart.

When considering these data, it should be no surprise that Atlanta is hailed as a haven for Black-owned businesses, as across all major sectors, these businesses comprise larger portions of total businesses when comparing Atlanta to the US as a whole. As can be seen, every sector has a far higher percentage of Black-owned businesses in metro Atlanta than for the nation. The sectors where Black-owned businesses are particularly strong locally include:

Transportation & warehousing
Information
Finance & insurance
Professional/scientific & tech services
Admin and support & waste mgmt. services
Health care & social assistance
Arts/entertainment & recreation
Accommodation & food services

The visualization also allows you to look at the share of employees and the share of annual payroll. The findings are essentially the same. Please note, that this analysis does not include businesses with no employees – so called sole proprietors or self-employed.

Another Note: due to limitations of the Annual Business Survey at the metropolitan level, data for four industries have been suppressed and are thus removed from the above chart. These industries are: