In the same time period, the total number of businesses increased 18% to 27.1 million.

The new data come from the Preliminary Estimates of Business Ownership by Gender, Ethnicity, Race and Veteran Status, culled from the census bureau’s 2007 survey of business owners.

The same report found that black-owned businesses rose 60.5%, Native American and Alaska Native-owned businesses climbed a combined 17.9% and the number of Hispanic businesses gained 43.6%.

Other highlights of the report:

• Of the nation’s 27.1 million businesses, roughly 5.8 million had paid employees. These businesses employed 118.7 million people, a 7.1% increase from 2002.

• Of the 5.8 million minority-owned businesses in 2007, an estimated 5 million had no paid employees.

• The number of women-owned businesses totaled 7.8 million in 2007, up 20.1% from 2002. Men-owned businesses totaled 13.9 million, up 5.5% from 2002.

• There were 1.9 million black-owned businesses in 2007, up 60.5%, with 37.6% of them in healthcare and social assistance, repair and maintenance, and personal and laundry services.

Stating that “the federal government is the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services, with purchases totaling over $500 billion per year,” President Obama’s task force is intended to further Congress’ goal of awarding at least 23 percent of all federal prime contracting dollars to small businesses. Congress also established governmentwide contracting goals for participation by small businesses that are located in Historically Underutilized Business Zones (at least 3 percent) or that are owned by women (at least 5 percent), socially and economically disadvantaged individuals (at least 5 percent), and service-disabled veterans (at least 3 percent).

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More important, these programs are not kowtowing to political correctness. In fact, hotel companies are finding themselves relying ever more on these typically smaller firms to fill gaps created by larger organizations that were overextended and succumbed to the effects of the Great Recession. Diversity classified companies are proving to be smarter and more resilient than many expected.

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She believes that her business, J-MOS, is in a good position — both literally and figuratively — to be part the biggest public-works project in state history: the $957 million Central Corridor project, which is gearing up for major construction this summer.

She’s so intent on being part of light rail history that she recently leased warehouse space on Endicott Street in St. Paul, a few blocks from the planned route of the Central Corridor, which will link the Twin Cities’ downtowns when it starts running in 2014. And she’s hoping to hire five to 10 additional employees.

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“What businesses of all sizes are telling us they need most right now is more business,” said Brian T. Moynihan, president and chief executive officer, Bank of America. “In addition to extending credit and providing technical assistance and a full range of banking services to our clients, we want to increase our support by purchasing more of their products and services, particularly from small, medium-sized and diverse businesses — coast to coast and across a wide range of industries. We hope other large companies will do the same.”

Small, medium-sized and diverse businesses provide the bank with a broad range of valuable services and products, including advertising, furniture, cleaning, courier service, home inspections, legal services, landscaping, maintenance, photography, security and software.

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Inspector General Joe Ferguson compared actual participation in the city’s minority contracting program to statistics reported to the City Council by the city Department of Procurement Services.

What he found was a program “beset by fraud and unlawful brokers” that has fallen far short of the city’s claims.

In construction contracts awarded in 2008 alone, companies owned by minorities and women got $19 million less than the city claimed they would get, roughly 15 percent of the total touted by the city.

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The New York State Department of Economic Development commissioned NERA to conduct a statewide disparity study under Executive Law § 312-a regarding the participation of minority and women-owned business enterprises in state contracts. NERA’s report examined the past and current status of minority-owned and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs) in the geographic and product markets for contracting and procurement in the state of New York.

In the NERA report, “The State of Minority- and Woman-Owned Business Enterprise: Evidence from New York,” co-authors NERA Vice President Dr. Jon Wainwright and longtime NERA collaborator Colette Holt, JD, of Colette Holt & Associates, found that M/WBEs have substantially lower business formation rates and business owner earnings; are more likely to be denied credit even with comparable balance sheets; and during the period of the study, found that M/WBE firms were generally utilized at far lower rates than their availability. Furthermore, the authors of the study determined that the statistical evidence supports the conclusion that these outcomes are consistent with discrimination in New York’s contracting and procurement markets.

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Corporations, the federal government, and state agencies all want to do business with minority-owned companies. The Department of Transportation, for example, requires that recipients of its funding award a percentage of contracts to minority-owned businesses and many large companies have goals for buying from minority-owned suppliers.

The reason for such mandates is twofold. First, contracting with minority-owned businesses is important to customers: “Corporate America understands that you cannot expect minorities to buy things when you haven’t done business with minorities,” says Steven Sims, the vice president of the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Second, it’s responsible: “It’s important because we have an obligation in government to ensure that all firms in our state have an opportunity to participate in contracts that are paid for with tax dollars,” says Luwanda Jenkins, the special secretary of minority affairs for Maryland.

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During a hearing Tuesday, some members of the state high court appeared inclined to permit some type of affirmative action when needed to address deliberate and ongoing discrimination.

The court is reviewing a San Francisco ordinance that gives firms owned by women and minorities an advantage in city contracting. Although the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 209 in 1997, the state high court is not bound by the circuit ruling.

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Hackett’s latest research found that companies with world-class procurement organizations commit 33% more of their spend to diverse suppliers (13.3% of total spend for world-class versus 10.0% for typical companies). But according to Hackett’s research, most companies still make major errors in how they operate and measure the performance of their supplier diversity efforts. Most rely on overly simplistic measures to evaluate the progress of supplier diversity programs, and never truly assess whether programs are meeting corporate objectives.

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