Census Report Says Latino Business Most Successful in Miami

Miami’s Latino community does more business than any other Hispanic center in the country, according to a U.S. Census Bureau study, but an economist says that the wealth is concentrated in a few hands.

“There has been a lot of back-slapping and congratulatory behavior but the truth is that only a few hundred people out of more than 800,000 Hispanics are very successful,” said Antonio Jorge, economist with Florida International University here,

Latino entrepreneurs in Miami’s Dade County are doing more business that their counterparts in Los Angeles or New York, thanks to a large concentration of Latinos in South Florida who sell more goods to each other, he said.

According to the report, 24,898 Latino-owned business in Dade County had 1982 sales of $2.2 billion, while in Los Angeles, where the Latino population is three times larger, 29,982 Latino firms reported receipts of $1.7 billion. (Nationwide, 248,1451 Hispanic-owned businesses--mostly car dealerships, service stations. wholesale firms and food stores--had receipts of $15 billion in 1982.)