The Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) has released the first-ever State of Entrepreneurship Minority Report. Among the key findings is 35% of inland businesses are owned by minority entrepreneurs with Hispanic owners representing the largest portion at 16%.
The report shows minority entrepreneurship is thriving in the Inland Empire region, growing to more than 50% and outpacing both California at 19% and the U.S. at 35% in 2021. African-American and Hispanic-owned firms are the primary drivers of minority entrepreneurship and have continued to grow in spite of the pandemic.
“Minority entrepreneurship is an incredibly positive indicator for the Inland Empire,” said Mike Stull, Director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship. “Overall, the rate of new entrepreneurs outpaces the national level; but lags when it comes to new ventures being created by individuals out of choice rather than necessity.”
Stull continued “These necessity ventures tend to be those in which innovation and scalability are lacking and often do not have larger economic impacts such as extensive job creation and large multiplier effects throughout the supply chain.”
As a result of evaluating the data, IECE has implemented a number of new programs to provide greater support to minority entrepreneurs such as Financial Fitness Bootcamp: 4-Day Small Business Training, Catapult Business Growth Network & Peer Mentoring, and the Procurement Center. Also in development are multiple Entrepreneurial Resource Centers (ERC), Microloan and/or seed grant programs, and a Food Entrepreneurship HUB.
The State of Entrepreneurship Minority Report analyzed monthly data from 2017 to 2021, from the Current Population Survey (CPS) by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. For a copy of the full report visit https://entre.csusb.edu/content/SOER.