Continuing a recent trend among major tech companies, Amazon has released a diversity report for its workforce. Globally, 63 percent of its employees are male, and 60 percent of its US-based workforce is white.
As for other ethnicities, 15 percent of employees identify as Black, 13 percent as Asian, and nine percent as Hispanic.
However, those numbers change substantially when you consider management. 75 percent of people in leadership positions are male, and 71 percent is white. Asians comprise 18 percent of leadership, with only four percent Hispanics and four percent Black.
Unfortunately, it’s clear there’s a lot of work still left to be done to improve these figures. Apple revealed its own diversity numbers in August, and painted very similar numbers to Amazon (and indeed, the rest of the tech world).
In the report, Amazon talks about how it’s trying trying to improve the status quo. For example, there are ‘Affinity Groups’ to provide input on how the company should work to represent various groups and increase its diversity – some what akin to enthic and diversity-oriented clubs in college.
Likewise, the company describes efforts to help encourage diversity in early stages of education; it partners with groups like the Anita Borg Institute and Code.org to help bring female students and students of color into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) academic tracks.
Diversity may not be where it should be yet, but at the very least it’s encouraging to see so many companies acknowledging their workforce discrepancies and actively implementing programs to combat those.
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