State Plates
The Washington Business Plate
In Washington, business plates turn on ownership — the firms a population builds. This plate places Black Washington in the national business geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black-owned businesses, and Washington's distribution figures — 490,000 Black residents, 4 percent of the state — give the scale of the community from which the state's Black-owned firms are drawn.
The National Pattern
In Washington, that national business pattern meets the state's own firms and employers, and the table below fixes the population it describes. 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 Washington, held against the national counts, the state's own rows say how its business population stands.
For Washington, 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 Washington, the comparison the plate invites is therefore two-sided: the national firm counts on one side, the state's enterprise on the other.
The firm counts read locally in Washington: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. 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. A benchmark in an atlas does not rank Washington; it locates it, and that is its whole use here.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for Washington; 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 Washington's counted Black population is the ground from which its firms, employers and sole proprietors alike, are built.
The Population Behind the Plate
The firm counts read locally in Washington: the state rows below give the population whose enterprise this national pattern frames. Washington holds about 490,000 Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in sixteen of its people, with Black alone at about 295,000, or 3.8 percent. National material earns its place on this plate only where it sharpens Washington's own record, stated plainly in the table.
For Washington, the national business figures are context; the state's own distribution, tabled below, is the plate's subject. Tacoma, the state's third city, is its most heavily Black large city — roughly a ninth of its 220,000 residents — built by the port, the railroads, and above all the military: Joint Base Lewis-McChord, one of the largest installations in the nation, sprawls across the Pierce County plain south of the city, and its service families sustain Black communities through Tacoma's Hilltop and Eastside, Lakewood (a base-adjacent city with one of the state's highest Black shares for its size), Parkland, and Spanaway. It is in the rows below — Washington's own — that the general material becomes a specific place.
Household income, stated as a median — the middle household of Washington, half above, half below — is economic geography's most compared figure. Where the table carries a national benchmark row for Washington, the row is labeled with the basis it is published on — the same measure, the same basis, two geographies. Against them, Washington's 490,000 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): 4%; Black share, alone or in combination: 6.4%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 490,000. Here, on the plate for Washington, 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.
How this plate is read, for Washington: 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): 4%; Black share, alone or in combination: 6.4%. In Washington, 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) | 4% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 6.4% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 490,000 |
| 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.