Women-owned business growth has been swelling for years. Non-white, multicultural women are the secret force behind overall progress and the introduction of more than $1.5 trillion in revenue to the nation's economy, according to a new report. 

Female-Led Entrepreneurship On the Rise

The National Women's Business Council published a new report confirming that women of color are taking the reins when it comes to entrepreneurship, based on recently released Census data on American businesses for 2007 through 2012.

Across the nation, there are 9.9 million women-owned businesses, and there has been an increase of 2.1 million women-owned businesses since 2007 (27.5 percent). Today, more than one-third of nonfarm and non-publicly-held businesses are women-owned (36.2 percent), and women-owned businesses have generated $1.6 trillion in receipts.

The top industries for women are health care and social assistance; professional, scientific and technical services; administrative and support and waste management; remediation services and retail trade. A considerable amount of entrepreneurial growth across industries can be attributed to multicultural business growth.

Latinas Mean Business

Entrepreneurship spiked for women of color despite nationwide economic strife during the recession and the ensuing recovery period.

According to fact sheet focusing exclusively Hispanic women-owned businesses, there are 1,475,829 Hispanic women-owned businesses in the U.S. That demonstrates an 87.3 percent increase since 2007, compared to Hispanic men, who saw only 39.3 percent of growth during the same time frame.

Hispanic women-owned firms represented 14.9 percent of all women-owned firms, and Latinas own 44.4 percent of all Hispanic nonfarm and non-publicly-held businesses. Since 2007, these firms saw a 50.3 percent increase in revenue, generating a total of $83.6 billion in receipts.

Most of the Hispanic-owned businesses (95.4 percent) are non-employer firms, earning modest average receipts of $19,537. However, The 4.6 percent of firms, which host 502,008 paid employees, had an annual bankroll of $14 billion and average receipts of $824,301.

The industries with the highest representation of Hispanic-owned businesses are administrative support and waste management, remediation management; health care and social assistance; retail trade; and professional, scientific and technical services. Also, the industries with the lowest representation are management companies and enterprises; mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; utilities; agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting; and information.

California, Texas, Florida, New York and Arizona are the states with the highest number of Hispanic-owned firms (366,997; 290,997; 263,163; 137,400 and 41,843 firms, respectively). Additionally, New York (502,008), Arizona (137,814), New Jersey (84,875), Illinois (72,197) and Georgia (35,794) are the top five states where Hispanic women-owned firms employ the greatest number of employees.

The report also showed that the states with the highest number of Hispanic women-owned employer firms by average receipts are Kansas, Connecticut, Alaska, Massachusetts and Indiana.