Best States for Minority Entrepreneurs: How Does Louisiana Rank?

There were over 2 million new businesses started in the U.S. over the past 10 years, and of those 2 million, over half of them were started by minorities.  And those new start ups created 4.7 million jobs.

According to a new study from Lendio, the number of new businesses that are owned by Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans is up more than 50% compared to 2007.  But there seems to be a lot more work that needs to be done.

In order to determine the best (and worst) states for minority entrepreneurs, the rankings were determined by analyzing a myriad of factors in all 50 states and D.C. including percentage of businesses that are minority owned, job growth at these companies, unemployment, and business loans to underserved communities.

Top 5 Best States

The number 1 state in the U.S. for minority owned businesses is Hawaii, where 51.3% of businesses are owned by people of color.  The rest of the top 5 are Maryland, Maine, Delaware, and New Jersey.

Bottom 5 Worst States

At #50, Montana ranked as the worst state for minority entrepreneurs, where just 4.1% of new businesses are owned by people of color.  Montana's number of jobs at minority businesses fell by 61% from 2019-2021.  Montana is making efforts to correct this by allocating more small business funding per capita through the Community Reinvestment Act.  This Act requires banks to offer lending services to underserved communities, than most other states. The rest of the bottom 5 include North Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Mississippi.

Louisiana isn't ranked in the bottom 5, but it doesn't look great as we did rank in the bottom 10, coming in at #40 on the list.