Immigrants, Latinos Helped Drive Business Creation Last Year

*More evidence of how Latinos are transforming the U.S. Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 28.5 percent of new businesses in 2014. VL

By Ruth Simon, The Wall Street Journal

Immigrants and Latinos helped drive an uptick in new business creation, according to a measure of 2014 U.S. startup activity to be released Thursday.

Immigrant entrepreneurs launched 28.5% of the new businesses in 2014, up from 25.9% a year earlier and just 13.3% in 1996, according to an annual startup index by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit.

Kauffman-funded researchers found that immigrants started new companies or became self-employed at nearly twice the rate of native-born Americans, creating an average of 520 businesses a month per 100,000 people last year. Immigrants accounted for 12.9% of the U.S. population in 2012, the most recent data available, up from 9.3% in 1996, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The share of new Latino business owners also climbed, to 22.1% in 2014 from 20.4% in 2013 and just 10% in 1996, Kauffman said. Latinos comprised 17.1% of the U.S. population in 2013, according to the most recent census count, up from 10.6% in 1996.

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