Inland Empire outpaces state, national trends for minority entrepreneurship

Minority entrepreneurship is thriving in the Inland Empire according to a report by the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB).

The State of Entrepreneurship Minority Report showed more than 50 percent of inland businesses are owned by minority entrepreneurs with Hispanic owners leading the trend. Not only that, but the Inland Empire region outperformed both California (19%) and the U.S. (35%) in 2021.

“Minority entrepreneurship is an incredibly positive indicator for the Inland Empire,” said Mike Stull, Director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship. “Overall, the rate of new entrepreneurs outpaces the national level; but lags when it comes to new ventures being created by individuals out of choice rather than necessity.”

Stull continued “These necessity ventures tend to be those in which innovation and scalability are lacking and often do not have larger economic impacts such as extensive job creation and large multiplier effects throughout the supply chain.”

In response to the results in the report, IECE has implemented several new programs to provide greater support to minority entrepreneurs such as Financial Fitness Bootcamp: 4-Day Small Business Training, Catapult Business Growth Network & Peer Mentoring, and the Procurement Center. Also in development are multiple Entrepreneurial Resource Centers (ERC), Microloan and/or seed grant programs, and a Food Entrepreneurship HUB.

The report analyzed monthly data from 2017 to 2021, from the Current Population Survey (CPS) by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics and survey results of more than 10,000 entrepreneurs and business owners representing a diverse group of industries in the Inland Empire. For a copy of the full report visit https://entre.csusb.edu/content/SOER.