Best Metro Cities For Black-Owned Businesses

Washington, D.C. tops the list

According to a new report from the National Urban League Policy Institute, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles are among the top two best metro areas for black-owned companies to do business.

The report said that, “Cities with strong diversity supplier policies and which allow easy access to business-to-business and government contracts were the best environments for black-owned businesses to grow.”

National Urban League President Marc H. Morial said, “Businesses owned by minorities have grown faster than white-owned businesses since 2007. One major factor in that growth has been the success of minority business set-aside programs. It’s been one of the few job-creation bright spots during this difficult recession and jobless recovery.”

Valerie Rawlston Wilson, the National Urban League’s vice president of research, proclaimed the greatest weakness in African-American entrepreneurship is not in starting businesses, but rather in growing these businesses enough to create sustained and significant revenue.

“Inability to obtain credit remains more of an obstacle for African American business owners than for any other group," she says.

Chicago and Detroit tied for third in rankings, while Atlanta and Charlotte both came in fifth. 

St. Louis, Dallas-Fort Worth, Cleveland, New York and Philadelphia followed.

The report also presented several recommendations for growing and strengthening black-owned businesses, from increasing the funding available for small business loans and raising the set-aside cap for government small business contracts to establishing robust procurement goals at all levels of government and encouraging support for private sector supplier diversity programs, the Atlantic Journal Constitution.