State Plates
The Alaska Business Plate
In Alaska, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black Alaska in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and Alaska's distribution figures — 50,000 Black residents, 3 percent of the state — give the scale of the community from which the state's Black-owned firms are drawn.
The National Pattern
The firm counts read locally in Alaska: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. The Census Bureau's Annual Business Survey counts about 161,000 Black-owned employer firms — companies with at least one paid employee — generating roughly 183 billion dollars in annual receipts and employing about 1.3 million people. That is what a benchmark is for in an atlas: not to rank Alaska, but to locate it.
The firm counts read locally in Alaska: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. Federal statistics classify a firm as Black-owned when Black owners hold 51 percent or more of the stock or equity. A benchmark in an atlas does not rank Alaska; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
For Alaska, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Black Americans are 13.5 percent of the national population but own about 3 percent of employer firms, and those firms take in roughly 1 percent of the receipts of all employer businesses. The comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Alaska; the benchmark rows are the published national business record, labeled as benchmarks. Ownership rates measured nationally become concrete only at the scale of an actual population — and Alaska's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
In Alaska, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Alaska holds about 50,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in fifteen of its people, with Black alone at about 24,000, or 3.3 percent. Read back against the table, the general pattern resolves into Alaska's particular numbers.
In Alaska, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. When the Army built the Alaska Highway in 1942 — 1,500 miles of road through the Yukon and British Columbia in eight months — roughly a third of the soldiers who built it were Black, serving in segregated engineer regiments (the 93rd, 95th, and 97th Engineers and their sister units) assigned disproportionately to the northern, coldest, least-supplied sections. Against the table, the national pattern sharpens into the particular numbers of Alaska.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of Alaska, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. Where the table carries a national benchmark row for Alaska, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies. Against them, Alaska's 50,000 Black residents are the market, the workforce, and the founder pool of the state's Black business community — the three roles every business plate in this atlas keeps in view at once.
A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 3%; Black share, alone or in combination: 6.8%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 50,000. Each figure comes from the source named below, rounded as published; the map shades the Black share on the same basis, so table and map can be read against each other without conversion.
The record behind this plate of Alaska is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey; Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics. Where Alaska's table carries a national benchmark row, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on, so the comparison it invites is an honest one — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Alaska: Black residents, alone or in combination: 50,000; United States benchmark — Black-owned firms with paid employees: 161,000. Stated together with the measures above, they fix the population this plate describes — its size, its share, and its standing against the national record — and they are the figures the surrounding text interprets, taken exactly as the source publishes them.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 3% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 6.8% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 50,000 |
| United States benchmark — Black-owned firms with paid employees | 161,000 |
| United States benchmark — annual receipts of Black-owned employer firms | $183 Billion |
| United States benchmark — people employed by Black-owned employer firms | 1.3 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black-owned nonemployer (solo) firms | 3 Million |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey; Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.