...the blue businesses in the US

Filipino-owned US businesses thrive

By EDU LOPEZ

June 15, 2011

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino-owned businesses are thriving in the US market, a testament that local entrepreneurs can compete globally. The Survey of Business Owners: Asian-Owned Businesses 2007 revealed that there were over 163,226 Filipino-owned business firms in the US, making it the fifth strongest Asian player in the US market next to Chinese (423,631), Indians (308,472), Vietnamese (229,139) and Koreans (192,502).
 

Filipino-owned businesses represent 10.5 percent of the Asian-owned businesses, one of the strongest segments of the US economy. Between 2002 and 2007, Asian-owned businesses grew by 40 percent to 1.5 million enterprises. The number of Philippine-owned businesses grew by 30.4 percent compared to Koreans (22.1%), Vietnamese (55.8%), Chinese (48.1%) and Indians (38.2%).


Among Filipino-owned US firms, nearly half were in the health care and social assistance sector, the professional, scientific and technical services sector, and the repair, maintenance, personal and laundry services sector. By comparison, 44.7 percent of Asian-owned businesses operated in repair and maintenance; personal and laundry services; professional, scientific and technical services; and retail trade.

About 55 percent of these Filipino-owned firms had one to four employees and nearly two percent had 50 or more employees.


More than a fifth had receipts of $10,000-$24,990 while 1.8 percent had receipts of $1 million or more. The largest number of Filipino-owned firms can be found in California, numbering around 81,348 or nearly 50 percent of total number of Filipino-owned firms.


They generated an income of $9.1 billion, 45 percent of all Filipino-owned receipts. The vast majority of Asian-owned businesses are also in California (509,097), followed by New York (196,852) and Texas (114,336). The cities with the largest number of Asian-owned businesses in were New York (153,885) and Los Angeles (61,607).