Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Gazelle Index®?
The Gazelle Index is the first ever national, random, quarterly survey of the current conditions, future optimism and hiring plans of high-performing minority, women, and nonminority small-business owners. The index is powered by EuQuant–an economic research and urban planning company that specializes in business analytics. EuQuant staff created the Gazelle Index to fill the glaring gap in time sensitive information on the performance of small businesses, especially minority and women-owned businesses.
What is www.gazelleindex.com?
This is the website where content about small, minority and women-owned businesses is published. The purpose of the site is to provide information that will allow entrepreneurs to become more successful. The site’s content includes survey results from the Gazelle Index, news and perspective articles on the state of the economy, strategic advice on how to operate businesses more effectively, and eventually it will contain numerous forms of social networks.
What is meant by High Performing Small Businesses?
The Gazelle Index defines high performing small businesses as those with 10 to 100 employees. Businesses of this size of comprise 4% of all small firms but employ 24% of all workers. The performance of these businesses is a leading indicator of future economic activity. This is because their CEOs are on the front lines of business activity and, unlike Fortune 500 corporations, they account for the majority of innovation and job creation in the country.
Why should I care about information provided at www.gazelleindex.com?
The majority of US workers are employed in small businesses, and new high-growth small businesses are the only sector in the economy that creates more new jobs than it eliminates. By helping small businesses become more successful, the site provides a way to support efforts to reduce the unemployment crisis in the economy. Official government figures indicate that over 13 million workers are currently unemployed– 40% of whom are either African-American or Hispanic/Latino. Along with this, 8.5 million workers are underemployed (i.e. employed part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs) and just over 1 million unemployed workers have become so discouraged they have dropped out of labor market and no longer counted in the unemployment numbers. If you are fortunate enough not to fall within one of those categories, you most likely know someone who does. This is why you should care.
Why Highlight Minority and Women Businesses?
Most people are not aware that twenty-one percent (21%) of the nation’s 27 million small businesses are owned by minority entrepreneurs and 46% are owned by women. Together, these two groups make up over half of all small-business owners and yet, there has never been any timely information on their performance, until now.
Are Women-owned and Minority-owned businesses becoming more or less important?
The number of Minority businesses increased by 600% over the last 15 years; women businesses increased by 200%, and nonminority owned businesses by only 47%. Over the last five years, the growth in revenue of minority and women-owned businesses outpaced that occurred in nonminority businesses. This suggests that they are becoming increasingly important to America’s economic future.
