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Asian American Population Overview

 

Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. They include groups such as Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian/Khmer, Pakistani Americans and others among the 37 nations whose national origin is from the Asian continent.

 

 

 

 Board Directors and Friends of the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce

Master Noorzad of Afghanistan (Left), Atty Lakshmi Challa of India (Center),

and HK Maxwell of Korea (Right) at the

Asian Pavilion of the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

 VIRGINIA ASIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

 

Asian Americans make up the third largest minority group in the United States. Overall, they have the second lowest poverty rate after non Hispanic whites and the highest educational attainment levels, median household income, and median personal income of all racial demographic in the nation.

 

Because of their more recent immigration trends into the United States, new Asian immigrants also have had different educational, economic and other characteristics than early 20th century immigrants. They also tend to have different employment and settlement patterns in the United States.

 

Virginia ranks 8th in the Nation with the highest number of Asian American population according to Census 2002 report.

 

Asian-owned Businesses

 

 

The number of Asian-owned businesses grew 24 percent between 1997 and 2002, approximately twice the national average for all businesses.

 

The 1.1 million businesses generated more than $326 billion in revenues, up 8 percent from 1997, according to: Survey of Business Owners: Asian-Owned Firms: 2002 released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

 

Nearly half (47 percent) of all Asian-owned firms were Chinese-owned (290,197) and Asian Indian-owned (231,179). Korean-owned firms were the third largest at 158,031, followed by Vietnamese- (147,081), Filipino- (128,223) and Japanese-owned firms (86,863).

 

Almost 1-in-3 of all Asian-owned firms had paid employees. These 319,300 businesses employed more than 2.2 million people and generated revenues of  $291 billion. More details here. 

Virginia Asian 's 44,000 Asian owned  businesses create more than 77,000 jobs annually and produce more than 8 billion dollars in revenue.  

 

Industry Trends

 

 

According to a recent analysis study on Asian American entrepreneurship from Asian Nation, in 2002, slightly more than 3-in-10 Asian-owned firms of the 1.1 million operated in professional, scientific and technical services as well as other services such as personal services, and repair and maintenance. These firms accounted for 6 percent of all such businesses in the U.S.

 

Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 47 percent of all Asian-owned business revenue.

 

There were 49,578 Asian-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more. These firms represent 4.5 percent of the total number of Asian-owned firms and 68 percent of their total receipts.

 

There were 1,863 Asian-owned firms with 100 employees or more, generating nearly $52 billion in gross receipts (18 percent of the total revenue for Asian-owned employers).

The Virginia Asian Chamber is here to protect Virginia's Asian business community interests in Virginia while connecting them to mainstream Virginia business.