Black Buying Power: Showing You the Money

Ebony Jet Article:

Black Buying Power: Showing You the Money
where we spent our scratch in 2007
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
By Donna Johnson and Boyd Klingler

You’re young, you’re hip, a trailblazing trendsetter. You’re mobile—by phone, by car, by ear–in every sense of the word. And if you’re African-American, you’re not just keeping up with the Joneses. In the eyes of merchandisers, and marketing directors, you are the Joneses. Congratulations, you’ve arrived—to the tune of $845 billion in buying power in 2007.

To give you some quantifiable sense of what that number actually feels like, only nine other countries in the world have a larger GDP than the $845 billion African-Americans contributed to the U.S. economy last year. Nine. Which means, in dollar amounts, African-America is the tenth largest country on the planet.

After pouring over a mountain of mind-numbing statistics and data, we’ve worked up a summary of the $845 billion impact African-Americans made in 2007 on an overall $10 trillion U.S. economy. And the aftershock goes beyond the numbers.

One other quick note before we get started: Wherever mentioned, Latinos are grouped by ethnicity and not race. The category of race is reserved for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and Whites. If you have issues with this classification, take it up with the Census Bureau.

Otherwise, here’s a breakout of just some of the more significant findings: Read Complete Article.