STEM fields are top for Latino owners of tech companies, says new study

 

POSTED ON Jan 30, 2019

 

Engineering, business, biology and life sciences are the top fields of study for Latino owners of scaled businesses. On average, 8 percent of Latino-owned businesses operate in the technology sector. According to the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI) Survey of U.S. Latino Business Owners published January 2019, Latino-owned businesses firms that develop and sell technology or software are more likely to be scaled (22 percent vs. 6 percent).

Latino tech company owners are just as likely to be U.S.-born as an immigrant. Their companies are mostly concentrated in a few states, with 27 percent in California, 14 percent in New York, 11 percent in Florida, and 9 percent in Texas.

Latino-owned businesses make up a substantial and growing segment of the U.S. economy, contributing 2.8 million jobs in 2016 and over $510 billion in annual sales.

Currently, Latino-owned businesses start small and stay small with only 3 percent of all Latino-owned businesses generating at least $1 million in annual gross revenue.

However, the report notes that Latino-owned businesses outpace the growth rate of all other groups, including white-, Asian-, and black-owned firms.

As of 2012, the latest census of all U.S. businesses available, Latino-owned firms represents 12 percent of all firms, totaling about 3.3 million firms and generating over $473 billion in sales. Last year SLEI estimated that in 2016 there were as many as 5 million Latino-owned businesses.

Even though white-owned businesses represent the largest percentage of all firms (78 percent), their growth rates have been decreasing in contrast to Latino-owned businesses, resulting in a loss of over 1 million white-owned businesses from 2007 to 2012.

In 2016, Latino-owned employer firms generated over $400 billion and employed almost 3 million people, which, in magnitude, is much lower compared to white-owned firms. White-owned firms generated over $10 trillion and employed 17 times the number of people or over 52 million people, SLEI says.