Augusta Ranks in Top 10 Cities With the Most Black-Owned Businesses

Augusta's Black-Owned Businesses February is Black History Month, and Augusta has made it in the top 10 cities with the Most Black-Owned Businesses. This is a great achievement, especially when you consider how many cities were studied. Research LendingTree.com conducted a study and in Augusta, 5.9 percent of the business are Black-owned.  While that number may not seem very high, it puts Augusta between cities like St. Louis, Missouri (6 percent) and Baltimore, Maryland (5.4 percent). The city with the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses is just a couple of hours away from Augusta, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Fayetteville has 11.2 percent Black-owned businesses.  The LendingTree report says, “Within the metro, Black people make up 33% of the population — seventh-highest among the 50 metros. The metro’s percentage of Black-owned businesses is closest to parity with the percentage of Black Americans in the U.S. at 12.8%.” The study looked at the 50 metros with the most Black-owned businesses and compared those numbers with the amount of total businesses to find the percentages. Some findings from this research: Surpringingly, Black-owned businesses are more likely to be within health care, social assistance, transportation and warehousing industries. “Compared to national averages, Black-owned businesses are more likely to be within the health care and social assistance and transportation and warehousing industries. These two industries represent 36% of Black-owned businesses. Nationally, only about 14.7% of businesses — regardless of race — are in one of those two industries.” Not such a surprise: Black-owned businesses are far underrepresented compared to the population size of the country. “Although Black people account for 12.8% of the total U.S. population, only 2.4% of businesses are Black-owned,” the study said. “This shows that Black-owned businesses are underrepresented relative to their share of the U.S. population.” The study found most cities with the lowest percentages of Black-owned businesses were also among the cities with the lowest percentage of Black population. “The 10 metros with the lowest percentage of Black-owned businesses are all below 2%. And they aren’t concentrated in a particular geographic region, ranging from Pittsburgh to San Diego to Seattle to Milwaukee.” Here are the top cities with the highest percentage of Black-owned businesses in the country: