In a week our nation will celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage month, the time of the year when we celebrate the culture, traditions, and history of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.

This is also a fitting time to celebrate their contributions as business owners to our nation’s economy.

Two weeks ago we released data from the 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO) highlighting the growing contributions of Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned businesses; today we are releasing data on Asian-owned businesses.

The 2007 SBO data show that Asian-owned businesses continued to be one of the strongest segments of our nation’s economy, growing 40 percent to 1.5 million businesses (more than twice the national rate) between 2002 and 2007 and in 2007 generating $507.6 billion in receipts, employing more than 2.8 million people and supporting payrolls totaling $79.6 billion.

Businesses owned by people of Asian Indian origin accounted for 19.9 percent of Asian-owned businesses, Chinese, 27.3 percent; Filipino, 10.5 percent; Japanese, 7.0 percent; Korean, 12.4 percent; Vietnamese, 14.8 percent; and other Asian, 9.9 percent.

The SBO also provides us with a detailed look at Asian-owned businesses by geographic areas, including states, cities, counties and metropolitan areas.

The Census Bureau website offers more information on Asian-owned businesses and Asian business owners.

View Maps:

//www2.census.gov/econ/sbo/07/final/maps/asian_map1.pdf
//www2.census.gov/econ/sbo/07/final/maps/asian_map2.pdf