According to a report from a bipartisan group of more than 450 mayors and business leaders from around the country known as the Partnership for a New American Economy, immigrants are increasingly more likely to start small businesses and create jobs.
The report, Open for Business: How Immigrants Are Driving Business Creation in the United States, highlight the significant and growing impact of immigrant entrepreneurs n new business generation and the creation of American jobs.
Among the report’s key findings:
-Immigrants are now more than twice as likely as the native-born to start a business and, in 2011, were responsible for more than one in every four (28 percent) new U.S. businesses, significantly outpacing their share of the population (12.9 percent).
-While immigrant-started businesses tend to be smaller than those started by native-born Americans, they have a large collective impact on the economy. Immigrant-owned businesses now employ one out of every 10 workers in privately-owned companies and contribute more than $775 billion in revenue, $125 billion in payroll and $100 million in income to the U.S. economy.
-While the entrepreneurship rate of native-born Americans has slowly declined over the last 15 years, the entrepreneurship rate of immigrants has climbed by over 50 percent.
The report also examines where immigrant business owners come from, what sectors of the economy they contribute to most, and which states are most affected by their contributions. The report’s in-depth analysis reveals additional evidence of the importance of immigrant entrepreneurs to America’s economic growth in the coming years:
-Over the past 10 years, immigrant business income grew by more than 60 percent, while income from native-owned businesses only grew by 14.4 percent, a rate not sufficient to keep up with inflation.
-Immigrant-owned businesses are more than 60 percent more likely to export than non-immigrant owned businesses, and in recent years, exports accounted for about half the growth in the U.S. economy.
-Immigrants start more than 25 percent of all businesses in seven of the eight-sectors of the economy that the U.S. government expects to grow fastest over the next decade (health care and social assistance companies, professional and business services, construction firms, retail trade, educational services, “other services”, and transportation and utilities.)
The Partnership released this report on August 14 at two forums on “The Economics and Politics of Immigration” in the presidential campaign headquarter cities of Chicago, IL and Boston, MA.
At Chicago’s forum, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Partnership Co-Chair, stated:
Both parties’ presidential candidates agree that the main issue of the campaign is the economy, and yet neither candidate is talking about one of the most effective and cost-free ways to generate economic growth: immigration reform. It’s time for the two candidates to stop using immigration reform as a wedge issue and start listening to Democratic and Republican business leaders and mayors who agree on common sense reforms that would create jobs across the country.
