State Plates
The Georgia Business Plate
In Georgia, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black Georgia in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and Georgia's distribution figures — 3.6 million Black residents, 33 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 Georgia: 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. A benchmark in an atlas does not rank Georgia; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
For Georgia, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Federal statistics classify a firm as Black-owned when Black owners hold 51 percent or more of the stock or equity. In Georgia, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
For Georgia, 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. For Georgia, 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 Georgia; 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 Georgia's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
In Georgia, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Georgia's Black geography has two layers. Read back against the table, the general pattern resolves into Georgia's particular numbers.
For Georgia, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. By share, Georgia at roughly one in three is exceeded among states only by Mississippi and Louisiana and by the District of Columbia as a city jurisdiction; by scale, its 3.6 million rank near the very top. In Georgia, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national coverage pattern on one side, the state's system on the other.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of Georgia, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. In Georgia, the benchmark panels carry both lenses at the national level. Against them, Georgia's 3.6 million 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): 33%; Black share, alone or in combination: 33.5%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 3.6 Million. For Georgia, 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 Georgia 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 Georgia, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies.
Two further figures complete the plate's account of Georgia: Black residents, alone or in combination: 3.6 Million; United States benchmark — Black-owned firms with paid employees: 161,000. In Georgia, 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, neither rounded further nor carried beyond what the source publishes.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 33% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 33.5% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 3.6 Million |
| 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.