Has Black entrepreneurship hit a record during Joe Biden’s presidency?

In an ad timed for Black History Month, President Joe Biden touted gains Black Americans made during his tenure. The Feb. 13 advertisement 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.” We’ve rated a few of those statements Mostly True: The record low for Black unemployment was reached in April 2023 and Black child poverty hit a record low of 22.3% in 2022. The Biden administration has also announced student debt forgiveness totaling $136 billion. While the student loan forgiveness efforts do not have racial guidelines, about 85% of Black undergrads finish college with student debt, compared with 69% of whites, so Black loan recipients benefit significantly from debt forgiveness efforts.

Data supports the statement that the prevalence of Black-owned small businesses has reached record levels under Biden, based on available data since 1989. 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.