Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Hispanic businesses booming

Rising numbers of Hispanics are getting a foothold in the U.S. business market.

By TIMES WIRE
Published March 22, 2006

ELLENTON - Marta Rodriguez stepped into a semicircle of middle school girls.

They sat up a little in their chairs, their eyes surveying Rodriguez's closed-toe heels and pinstriped dress suit.

The girls, daughters of farm or construction workers from Ruskin, stared attentively at Rodriguez as they heard how she worked her way through college, moving up from a telemarketing job to opening an insurance agency office in Riverview.

Rodriguez, 25, who took part in a Leadership Conference on Tuesday to inspire Hispanic youth to plan for college, joined a national trend last year when she launched her business.

Fueled by a rapidly expanding Hispanic consumer market, the number of Hispanic-owned businesses is growing much faster than the national rate for other companies.

Hispanics owned nearly 1.6-million businesses in 2002, a 31 percent increase from five years earlier, according to a report Tuesday by the Census Bureau. The number of all U.S. companies grew by 10 percent, to about 23-million, during the same period.

"The Hispanic consumer market is exploding," said Michael Barrera, president and CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "Who knows that consumer market best?"

Hispanic consumers spend $700-billion a year, a figure that is expected to climb to $1-trillion by the end of the decade, Barrera said.

Ronald Langston, director of the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency, said immigration is helping to increase the diversity of America's economy.

He noted that one in 10 U.S. workers is Hispanic, a figure that is expected to grow to one in four by 2050.

"The United States will once again become a nation of immigrants," Langston said.

The overwhelming majority of Hispanic-owned businesses were one-person enterprises, according to the report. Only 13 percent had employees other than the owner. About a fourth of U.S. businesses had employees in 2002, the report said.

New businesses started by Hispanics face many of the same problems as those started by non-Hispanics, said Louis Olivas, assistant vice president for academic affairs at Arizona State University. Money to start and expand is usually the biggest hurdle, he said.

"All startup businesses face funding issues," Olivas said.

Some Hispanic business owners face language barriers, but those who speak Spanish and English have advantages, he said.

The report is based on administrative records and a survey of 2.4-million businesses. The Census Bureau defines Hispanic-owned businesses as private companies in which Hispanics hold at least 51 percent of stock or interest. The report does not classify public companies, with publicly traded stock, because they can be owned by many stockholders of unknown ethnicities.

Hispanics owned nearly 7 percent of businesses in 2002, up from about 6 percent in 1997.

They made up a little more than 13 percent of the population in 2002, but they have accounted for half of the nation's population growth since the start of the decade, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

In Ellenton, Rodriguez told her audience of middle school girls that as Hispanic families get more settled, they are more confident to start companies.

Born in Miami and raised in Wimauma, Rodriguez came from a family of Mexican farm workers who obtained their U.S. citizenship but initially felt that college and business ownership were someone else's domain, she said after the conference.

"I think it's like "hey, we can do this, too,"' she said.

In the past few years, she has seen Hispanic-owned delis, tax preparation offices, mortgage brokerages, bakeries and restaurants open in East Hillsborough, from Wimauma to Riverview to the suburban enclave of Summerfield.

Rodriguez earned her associate's degree in business administration from Manatee Community College in 2003 and then worked her way up at an insurance agency from a telemarketing position to customer service representative to an insurance agent.

An agent put her in charge of an office and set a yearly performance goal. By the end of the year she had doubled it, and realized then that she could go into business herself, she said. Last April, she opened RDZ Insurance Group Inc. in Riverview.

"Why am I doing this for someone else?" she said she told herself. "Why can't I do this for myself?"

Times staff writer Saundra Amrhein contributed to this Associated Press story.

Nearly three in 10 Hispanic-owned companies were in construction or service-related industries in 2002.

Hispanic-owned businesses generated nearly $222-billion in revenue in 2002, up 19 percent from five years earlier.

New York City in 2002 had the most Hispanic-owned businesses, 129,461, followed by Los Angeles, Houston and Miami.

There were 29,184 Hispanic-owned companies with receipts of $1-million or more in 2002.

There were 1,510 Hispanic-owned companies with 100 or more employees that generated more than $42-billion in receipts.

About 44 percent of Hispanic business owners were of Mexican descent.

[Last modified March 22, 2006, 01:58:24]