State Plates
The District of Columbia Business Plate
In District of Columbia, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black District of Columbia in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and District of Columbia's distribution figures — 310,000 Black residents, 41 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 the District of Columbia: 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 District of Columbia, but to locate it.
The firm counts read locally in the District of Columbia: 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 District of Columbia; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
In the District of Columbia, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. 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. In District of Columbia, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for District of Columbia; 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 District of Columbia's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
For the District of Columbia, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Washington holds about 310,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — nearly half of its people, with Black alone at about 282,000, or 41 percent. District of Columbia's own rows, tabled below, are where this general material becomes a specific place.
For the District of Columbia, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Black business in the District is older than the federal city around it: U Street's Black Broadway was a commercial district of national standing a century ago, and today's firms cluster where the community's institutions and the federal market meet — professional services, contracting, food, and the trades that serve a government city. It is in the rows below — District of Columbia's own — that the general material becomes a specific place.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of District of Columbia, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. The table's benchmark row for District of Columbia states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis. Against them, District of Columbia's 310,000 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): 41%; Black share, alone or in combination: 45%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 310,000. In District of Columbia, each figure is published by the source named below and rounded as published; the plate's map shades the Black share of the population on the same basis, so the table and the map can be read against each other without conversion.
The record behind this plate of the District of Columbia is published, not estimated by this atlas: U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Business Survey; Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics. Where the table carries a national benchmark row for District of Columbia, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 41% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 45% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 310,000 |
| 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.