April 19, 2001

Number of North Dakota Businesses Owned by Women Lags Nation

Women owned 12,417 North Dakota nonfarm businesses in 1997, employing 13,482 persons and generating $1.2 billion in business revenues. According to the recent Economic Brief released from the North Dakota State Data Center, in 1997, women-owned firms accounted for 22.5 percent of all nonfarm businesses in North Dakota, 5.7 percent of their employment and 3.3 percent of their receipts.

"A new way of conducting the survey makes it difficult to compare historically, nonetheless, the proportion of women-owned businesses in North Dakota, and among the northern Great Plains states, lag behind national averages," said Richard Rathge, director of the State Data Center, located at North Dakota State University. "The greatest relative proportion of women-owned businesses are in West Coast states, southwestern states, a pocket of states surrounding Washington D.C. and several Great Lake states. This corresponds to the areas of greatest population growth. Perhaps there is a connection," said Rathge.

Seventy-eight percent of women-owned firms operated as a service or in retail trade. Approximately one-half of the receipts generated by women-owned firms were concentrated in retail trade and services. Another 28 percent of receipts were concentrated in wholesale trade, agricultural services, forestry, fishing and mining.

Women-owned firms with paid employees accounted for 17.1 percent of the total number of women-owned firms and 87.2 percent of gross receipts.

The data presented in this months Economic Brief are from the 1997 Economic Census, Women-Owned Business Enterprises report released in March 2001. The Economic Census is conducted every 5 years with 1997 data being the most current. The data for 1997 are not directly comparable to previous survey years because of several significant changes to the survey methodology. For more information, go to www.census.gov/epcd/www/econ97.html.

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Source: Richard Rathge, (701) 231-8621, richard_rathge@ndsu.nodak.edu
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu

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