The number of U.S. Asian-owed firms increased 40% to 1.5 million between 2002 and 2007, increasing at more than twice the national rate. These businesses also generated $508 billion in receipts, a 55% increase from 2002. Asian-owned businesses are also an engine of job creation, of the 1.5 million Asian-owned businesses in 2007, 397,484 had paid employees.
Paid employment grew by 28 percent from over 2.2 million workers to more than 2.8 million workers, compared to less than a 1% growth for non-minority-owned firms. In 2007 Asian-owned business with employees averaged 7 employees and payroll per employee increased 12% from 2002 to 2007. The payroll per employee increased from $25,000 in 2002 to $28,000 in 2007. The average payroll per employee for all minority-owned firms was about $28,000 in 2007 and $35,000 for non-minority firms.
Asian-owned firms are the first minority group to reach entrepreneurial parity in number of firms and employment by reaching the same proportionality in these business measures as their share of the adult Asian population which was 4.9 percent. If Asian-owned firms had reached parity in gross receipts with their share of the adult Asian population in 2007, these firms would have generated $538 billion instead of $508 billion – a gap of about $30.1 billion. However, when we analyzed the data by ethnic group, Filipino-, Vietnamese-, and Japanese-owned businesses have yet to reach entrepreneurial parity in all three business measures with their share of their adult population.
