News and Announcements

The U.S. Small Business Administration kicked off its 2012 e200/Emerging Leaders executive-level training initiative in 27 cities and communities. Since 2008 the e200/Emerging Leaders initiative has helped nearly 1,000 promising small business owners in underserved communities across the country sustain and grow their businesses, providing training they use to succeed and create jobs.

“Over the last few years Emerging Leaders has helped expand opportunities for many promising small businesses in underserved communities – in particular those that have been most impacted by these tough economic times,” SBA Administrator Karen Mills said. “Graduates of the program have increased their revenue, created jobs and helped drive local economic growth in their communities. Continuing with this year’s lineup of new classes builds on this success and provides even more entrepreneurs in underserved communities with the support, resources and skills to succeed.”

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama laid out proposals for how to bring about a new era of American manufacturing, with more good jobs and more products stamped Made in the USA.  A few of the proposals are:

• Reward companies for bringing jobs back to America.

• Lower tax rates for companies that manufacture and create jobs in the United States.

• Get tough on trade enforcement.

• Create more jobs and make us more competitive by rebuilding America using half of the savings from ending foreign wars.

These proposals build upon the efforts already underway by the White House.

At the Department of Commerce, we support manufacturers in a multitude of ways:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Manufacturing Extension Partnership works with small and mid-sized U.S. manufacturers to help them create and retain jobs, increase profits, and save time and money. The nationwide network provides a variety of services, from innovation strategies to process improvements to green manufacturing. MEP also works with partners at the state and federal levels on programs that put manufacturers in position to develop new customers, expand into new markets and create new products.

The International Franchise Association recently released new research on minority-owned, female-owned and joint female/male-owned franchise businesses. The report, Franchised Business Ownership, 2007: Minority and Gender Groups, prepared by the IFA Educational Foundation (IFAEF) and based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 Survey of Business Owners, shows minority and joint ownership (female/male) of franchise businesses increased from 2002 to 2007, while female ownership declined.

"Franchising offers opportunities for all Americans to go into business for themselves, but not by themselves," said IFA President & CEO Steve Caldeira. "Despite a continued challenging economic environment, franchising continues to offer opportunities for women and minorities to become small business owners, particularly when benchmarked against other industries."

While there can be debate about what it means, the unassailable fact is that Latino -owned businesses in the United States are growing at a blistering pace — in fact more than twice the national average.  This trend has been sustained for at least the last decade and manifests itself both in the growing number and size of Latino- owned businesses.  During the latest 5-year period for which information is available from the census bureau, Latino owned business’ revenue jumped by an astonishing 55% to nearly $350 billion. Some think that the census data underestimates the economic clout of Latino businesses, estimating the sales of such businesses in 2008 at $547 billion.  Many are very substantial businesses with numerous employees: the number of Latino- owned businesses with more than $1 million in revenue grew to over 44,000 in 2007, up from just 29,000 five years earlier.