Tech industry workforce still very white

A new report on diversity in the tech industry finds that black, Hispanic, and Native people remain underrepresented. Breaking the Mold, the report by OpenMIC,found that in Silicon Valley, black, Hispanic, and native people are “underrepresented in tech by 16-to-18 percentage points compared with their presence in the US labor force overall.”  

Take the specific example of Google. Almost 60 percent of its workers are white, while two percent are black, three percent are Hispanic, and less than four percent are Native or multiracial. Facebook isn’t much better: 52 percent of its workforce is white, while two percent are black, four percent are Hispanic, and four percent are Native or multiracial. The companies have to act.

This is not a new problem for the tech industry. Back in 2011, Silicon Valley companies tried to hide their workforce data, calling it a “trade secret.” That’s nonsense, of course. And last year, a special report on diversity by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that “compared with all industries reported in the 2014 EEO-1 private sector survey overall participation rates of whites, Asian Americans, and males in U.S high tech industries were disproportionately higher, especially in the Silicon Valley geographic area.”

Read the full report here. Speed Matters supports a just diversity in the workforce and urges tech firms to use their financial clout to bring all minorities, as well as women, into this vital sector.

Link:

Breaking the Mold: Investing in Racial Diversity in Tech (OpenMIC, Feb. 2017)

Silicon Valley's diversity secret (Speed Matters, Mar. 23, 2013)

Tech sector still lacks diversity (Speed Matters, May 27, 2016)