Jul. 15—Bad news for local women eager to launch a new company: An analysis determined that, when it comes to female business owners, our area ranks near the bottom of the country's most populous metropolitan areas.
The good news: Overall, one in five business with employees in the U.S. are owned by women, generating more than $1.8 trillion in annual revenue and employing nearly 11 million people.
The numbers are less impressive for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton metropolitan Statistical Area, where 13.6% of businesses are owned by women. That means the local MSA has the fourth smallest percentage of female business owners among the country's 100 most populous MSAs.
The report was released by backgroundchecks.org, which bill itself as "the Internet's premier resource and database for everything related to Public Records, both online and off." It used data from the U.S. Census Bureau's annual business survey.
If you want to live in an MSA with the highest percentage of female business owners, Hawaii beckons. More than a quarter — 26.1% — of Urban Honolulu businesses with employees are owned by women.
On the other end of the spectrum, it turns out that the local MSA scored poorly, it was spared the distinction of being the worst place for women owners. That title, both in Pennsylvania and nationally, is Lancaster with a paltry 12.1% of businesses with employees owned by woman.
That said, all other Pennsylvania MSAs on the list outdid us. The highest ranked MSA in the state is actually mostly in New York and New Jersey: The New York/Newark/Jersey City MSA has 21.2% of businesses owned by women. Nationwide, 20.9% of businesses are owned by women.
The report notes a few other, more general findings:
—Women are more likely than men to report that flexible hours or balancing work and family obligations were very important when deciding to start a business. Men are more likely to say that the possibility of earning greater income or wanting to be their own boss motivated their decision to start a business.
—The industries that women tend to start businesses in are different from the most common industries for men. In particular, fields like health care and social assistance or accommodation and food service tend to have higher proportions of women-owned businesses. And in part due to these differences in industry, women-owned firms tend to pay about 30% less per employee than the national average.
—More female business owners (55%) are involved with their first business than their male counterparts (47.5%). In contrast, men are more likely to have moved on from a previous business in some form.
Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish