In partnership with UC, the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce (AACC) conducted a study in an eight-county region of Greater Cincinnati to examine the economic and fiscal impact of Black-owned businesses in 2023. The report was a continuation of a 2021 study released in 2022 that was the nation’s first study to quantify Chamber of Commerce data about Black-owned businesses.
“Business ownership provides an opportunity to build wealth for Black or African American individuals,” the latest study report reads. “Such an opportunity is particularly significant for Black or African American families, whose median net worth of $24,100 was 7.8 times lower than the median net worth of white families in 2019.”
According to the study, in 2023, Black-owned businesses in the Cincinnati region:
- Created a total of $2.8 billion in sales, supporting 16,472 jobs with $635.1 million in earnings
- Generated $1.5 billion of direct sales and employed 9,024 individuals with earnings of $341.2 million
- Supported an additional $1.4 billion of indirect sales, which indirectly supported an additional 7,448 jobs with earnings of $293.8 million
- Generated $34.3 million in earnings and sales tax revenue for state and local jurisdictions
These numbers are up from those published in the previous study. When the study first started in 2021, researchers found that Black-owned businesses supported more than $1.4 billion in economic activity, then $2.1 billion in 2022.
The study found that industries containing the most Black-owned businesses were the “Other Services” industry; the “Professional, Scientific and Technical Services” industry; and the “Retail Trade” industry. Collectively, these industries represented 47.4% of the Black-owned businesses in the eight-county region covered in the analysis.
