State Plates
The North Carolina Business Plate
In North Carolina, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black North Carolina in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and North Carolina's distribution figures — 2.5 million Black residents, 22 percent of the state — give the scale of the community from which the state's Black-owned firms are drawn.
The National Pattern
For North Carolina, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. 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. In North Carolina, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
In North Carolina, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. Federal statistics classify a firm as Black-owned when Black owners hold 51 percent or more of the stock or equity. In North Carolina, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
For North Carolina, 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 North Carolina, 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 North Carolina; 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 North Carolina's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
In North Carolina, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. North Carolina's institutional distinction is higher education: the state holds about a dozen historically Black colleges and universities, among the most of any state. Held against the national ladder, North Carolina's own rows say where its attainment stands.
For North Carolina, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. In North Carolina, north Carolina's profile is the series' argument for reading growth and rootedness together. In North Carolina, the plate's own table is where this general material meets the specific geography, and the two should be read together.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of North Carolina, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. The table's benchmark row for North Carolina states its basis in its label — the comparison rests on the same measure on the same basis. Against them, North Carolina's 2.5 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): 22%; Black share, alone or in combination: 23.7%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 2.5 Million. For North Carolina, 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.
A closing word on the use of this plate: the figures for North Carolina are a reference, meant to be cited, compared, and returned to. In North Carolina, a reader who needs the underlying counts will find them in the published tables of the source named below, from which every figure here descends without alteration beyond the rounding the source itself applies.
How this plate is read, for North Carolina: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 22%; Black share, alone or in combination: 23.7%. In North Carolina, the two presentations are one record in two forms, and a reader who checks one against the other has the plate's whole method in hand.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 22% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 23.7% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 2.5 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.