Men lie, women lie, numbers don't
A campaign ad for President Joe Biden said: "The lowest Black unemployment rate in history. Black child poverty cut in half. Record numbers of new Black entrepreneurs. And over $130 billion in student debt forgiven."
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What the data shows
According to a
Brookings Institution analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s
Annual Business Survey, the number of Black-owned businesses with more than one employee has increased every year since 2017. The biggest increase came between 2020 and 2021, when the number rose from about 140,000 to a little over 161,000. 2021 is the most recent year for which final data from this survey is available.
The growth from 2020 to 2021 represented the largest percentage increase — 14.3% — of any year since 2017.
The second dataset comes from the Federal Reserve’s
Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted every three years, most recently in 2022.
The 2022 survey found that 11% of Black households held equity in a business, far higher than the previous record of 6.6% in 2016.
Black-owned businesses also grew faster in several categories than businesses owned by whites, Asian Americans, Latinos or Hispanics, and Native Americans did. Black-owned businesses had a 7% increase in employees, a 30% increase in revenue, and a 27% increase in payroll in 2021, the analysis by Brookings, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, showed.
When contacted for comment, the White House shared independent analyses suggesting that some Biden policies helped spur these increases.