In honor of Black History Month, we take a look at Metro Atlanta’s Black-owned employer businesses which, according to new data from the Census Annual Business Survey (ABS), are thriving. For the third year in a row, LendingTree named Atlanta as the nation’s leading metro for Black-owned businesses. All of the top ten metro areas from LendingTree’s report are in the Sunbelt, with Fayetteville (NC), Virginia Beach, Memphis, and Washington, D.C. rounding out the top 5, after Atlanta. Alongside Atlanta, the Augusta metro is the only other region from the state of Georgia in the top 10 nationally.

We note that the ABS findings from the most recent data release are from calendar year 2022. A few of the highlights are as follows:

  • Black-owned employer businesses totaled 13,766 firms, up from 10,689 the prior year
    • This represents nearly a 30% increase year over year
  • The percent of all employer businesses in the metro that are Black-owned was 11.3%
    • This percentage is climbing: last year, the percent of all employer businesses that were Black-owned was 8.8%.
  • The average payroll of Black-owned employer businesses was $36,574, up from $33,446 the prior year
    • Again, progress was made when measured year over year. In 2022, the average payroll at Black-owned employer businesses was 57.1% of the average payroll across all employer businesses, up from 50.3% in 2021.
  • Businesses in “Health care and social assistance” (NAICS Sector 62) recorded over $2.6 billion in sales in 2022, the top-performing sector of all Black-owned employer firms in the Atlanta metro
    • This sector also employed the largest workforce, with an employment of over 29,000 employees in this sector alone

As shown below, Black-owned employer firms in the ‘Information’ sector (NAICS 51) had the highest average payroll across all sectors, at nearly $77,000:

The following chart shows the top sectors for Black-owned employer businesses in metro Atlanta, ranked by average employment size:

As shown above, the ‘Health care and social assistance’ sector ranked fifth in terms of average employment per business. However, as stated above, it employed the largest workforce among all sectors of Black-owned employer firms. Also of note, the “Accommodation & food services” industry employed the second-largest workforce of all sectors within the metro area, with 15,230 employed in Black-owned employer businesses.

Black-owned employer firms continue to grow in number, payroll, and employment across the region, a sign that the metro Atlanta region remains a hub for Black entrepreneurship and innovation.

Notes:

Blog image photo credit: https://fedcommunities.org/black-owned-small-businesses-credit-access-challenges/