The Census Bureau categorizes businesses as either nonemployer (where the owner is the only employee) or employer (which have one or more employees beside the owner). Immigrants own nearly a fifth of all employer companies and almost a quarter of nonemployer businesses — higher than their percentages of the US population or the workforce generally.
In 2022, immigrants made up 13.9% of the US population and 18.1% of the workforce.
As of that same year, immigrants owned 19.1% of employer companies; the other 80.9% had US-born owners. This is a higher share than in 2018, the first year the Census collected this data, when 18.0% of employer firms were immigrant-owned.
The latest data on nonemployer businesses is from 2021: 24.0% of owners were immigrants, a slight rise from 2018, when 22.8% were.
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Which industries have the most immigrant business owners?
Employer businesses in accommodation and food services were most likely to have an owner born outside the US, with more than a third of the industry’s businesses under immigrant ownership. The next-highest were in retail (24.8% immigrant-owned) and healthcare and social assistance (23.4%).
For nonemployer businesses, transportation and warehousing had the largest share of immigrant owners: 43.1%.
In both categories, immigrants owners were least represented in the mining, oil, and gas industry and agriculture related industries. Mining numbers track with overall workforce patterns — as of 2023, mining had one of the lowest percentages of immigrants in the workforce. Agriculture, on the other hand, had a higher-than-average percentage of immigrant workers, despite the lower ownership rate.
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Page sources and methodology
All of the data on the page was sourced directly from government agencies. The analysis and final review was performed by USAFacts.
Census Bureau
ECNSVY Annual Business Survey Module Characteristics of Businesses
