According to the Center for American Progress, Black women are driving the entrepreneurship boom in America, founding six times as many businesses as the national average and generating 1.4 million new jobs. This rise in entrepreneurship suggests that many women are looking for alternatives to the traditional workforce for achieving economic independence and are exploring business ownership as a way to gain financial freedom and build wealth.
However, despite the fact that Black women are establishing businesses at a quick rate, their businesses tend to generate less revenue, remain smaller, and fail more frequently.
Black women-owned businesses continue to face various challenges, one of the major ones being a lack of access to funding, which prevents them from taking advantage of promising prospects or, in some circumstances, even from starting up a new venture.
In order to better understand the revenue trends among Black women entrepreneurs, we surveyed Black women business owners across the United States in our recently published report titled the "State of Black-Women Owned Businesses in 2022" and we were able to gather the following key insights about their revenue trends over the last three years:
2019 Statistics
44% of the Black women-owned businesses surveyed reported generating less than $10,000 in annual revenue in 2019
Approximately 1 in 5 businesses reported generating $10,000 - $100,000 in annual revenue during 2019.
6% of businesses reported generating more than $100,000 in 2019.
The remaining respondents did not own a business in 2019.
2020 Statistics
2021 Statistics
We also gathered data insights around their average monthly revenue which showed the highest percentage of respondents making less than $1,000 per month in 2019, and having an overall average revenue generation of $1,000-$2,999 per month in both 2020 & 2021.
Finally, we asked each of them what their biggest challenges have been in increasing their revenue and the following answers were a common theme across the board:
Lack of capital
Finding and retaining customers.
Staffing and Finance
Time Management
Customer acquisition
Getting respect for work done and getting clients to pay on time.
Navigating the new way of communication (i.e. chat, messenger, etc.)
If you'd like to dig deeper and learn more about the state of Revenue Trends of Black women-owned businesses across the United States among many other key topics that we cover, you can download the full report for free today.