Wall Street Journal – Immigrants and Latinos helped drive an uptick in new business creation, according to a measure of 2014 U.S. startup activity.
Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 28.5% of the new businesses in 2014, up from 25.9% a year earlier and just 13.3% in 1996, according to an annual startup index by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, MO., nonprofit.
Kauffman-funded researchers found that immigrants started new companies or became self-employed at nearly twice the rate of native-born Americans, creating an average of 520 businesses a month per 100,000 people last year. Immigrants accounted for 12.9% of the U.S. population in 2012, the most recent data available, up from 9.3% in 1996, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The share of new Latino business owners also climbed, to 22.1% in 2014 from 20.4% in 2013 and just 10% in 1996, Kauffman said. Latinos comprised 17.1% of the U.S. population in 2013, according to the most recent census count, up from 10.6% in 1996.
The increase in startups could reflect greater opportunities for Hispanic entrepreneurs…Click here to read more.
