Report: Portland's percentage of women-owned small businesses higher than U.S. average

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Portland metro area’s share of women-owned businesses is roughly 6% higher than the national average, according to new data.

The Portland City Council reviewed the information in the “2023 State of Small Business” report Wednesday, which was conducted by the public policy research firm ECOnorthwest. Michael Wilkerson, the ECOnorthwest Director of Analytics, told the city council that the report was “encouraging” for Portland’s economy.

“We know Portland to be a place of small business,” Wilkerson said. “We also know small business, generally, is the bedrock of the economy and it allows for vibrancy and growth in the economy. I think what we didn’t know is the extent to which that is true in Portland, relative to other places.”

According to the report, 41% of the Portland metro area’s small businesses are owned by women. That number was 14% higher than similarly sized cities, like Salt Lake City and the greater Nashville area.

The Portland metro area’s percentage of women-owned small businesses ranked second among comparable U.S. cities, falling 2% behind the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area.

While Portland’s women-owned small businesses ranked higher than the U.S. average, its percentage of small businesses owned by Black, Indigenous, or other people of color ranked 6% below the national average. However, Wilkerson said that the data is skewed because of Portland’s statistically smaller number of BIPOC citizens, and that the disparity between Portland’s BIPOC population and BIPOC-owned small businesses is actually closer than other similarly-sized cities.

“Really, to get an equal understanding, it’s the disparity between the share of the population and the share of the businesses that allows us to actually understand on a more apples-to-apples basis how we fare in that sense,” Wilkerson said. “We have 16% fewer businesses than our share of the population, and that actually stacks up better than the national average and better than all of our peers.”

The entire presentation can be viewed in Wednesday’s city council meeting. For the purpose of the study, ECOnorthwest defined small businesses as any business with fewer than 50 employees.