In the United States, immigrants are more likely to be self-employed than the native population, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The numbers might not look like much at first–10% of native-born Americans are self-employed, compared to 11% of immigrants–but when broken down by racial and ethnic demographics, the differences are far starker.
Among white immigrants, 17% were self-employed, compared to 11% U.S.-born, and 11% of immigrant Hispanics versus 6% of natives are also self-employed. The same trend holds among blacks and Asians, according to the Pew report. In 2014, self-employed workers and the people they hired accounted for 44 million jobs–about three in every ten jobs in the United States. Almost one-quarter of all self-employed workers had at least one paid employee.
Immigrants accounted for almost 30% of the new businesses created last year, and in more than 60% of the largest metro areas, immigrants accounted for all of the net growth in “Main Street” businesses like restaurants and retailers between 2010 and 2013, according to the Wall Street Journal.