A little bad news, good news on the small business front.

First the bad, the number of American businesses grew less than 18 percent in the most recent five-year period for which U.S. Census data is available.

Now for the good: companies owned by Hispanics and Asian-Americans grew at double that rate during the same period. For African American-owned businesses—the growth rate was three times as fast.

The Census data, along with research from American City Business Journals (the parent company of Portfolio.com), paint a robust picture of a more diverse country when it comes to small- and mid-sized businesses. The ACBJ data is the work of Godfrey Phillips, ACBJ's vice president for research, and lead strategist Jessie Shaw.

Click Next to learn more about the state of minority-owned business in the United States and learn some of the demographic components of this growing business sector.