Google increased representation as the tech company hired more Black and Latino employees in the U.S. last year, according to company officials.
In a statement accompanying the company’s new diversity report, the chief diversity officer, Melonie Parker, claimed that, over the past year, Google’s employees have become more diverse than before.
“The number of Black+ and Latinx+ Googlers in the U.S. is growing faster than the Googler community overall, and as a result, we saw our largest increases in representation of Black+ and Latinx+ Googlers in the U.S. ever,” said Parker.
According to Parker, overall, representation for Black hirees increased 20% year over year while representation for Latino hirees increased 8% year over year. As for leadership roles, representation for Black, Latino and Native American employees increased by 27%.
While Parker illustrates an improvement, the diversity report that was recently released on May 19 shows that there’s still room for improvement. As the report shows, while there was an increase in BIPOC representation in employment practices, there’s still a lack of balance as rates of employment for most BIPOC communities are failing to reach the rates of employment for white people.
According to the report, in terms of Black representation, the report details an increase of just 0.9%, moving from 4.4% Black representation in Google’s U.S. workforce to 5.3%. Latino representation increased even less, moving up 0.5% from 6.4% to 6.9%, while Native American representation stayed at a rate of 0.8% and didn’t improve at all.
Although Asian representation in the Google workforce was significantly higher than other BIPOC communities represented, the rate increased by just 0.9%, going up from 42.3% to 43.2%.
White representation was the most prominent of all groups. While it went down from the reported 50.4% in the 2021 report, white employees made up 48.3% of Google’s U.S. workforce, significantly higher than most BIPOC groups.
This lack of BIPOC representation is not only an issue for Google but for the tech world in the U.S. in general.
In a recent survey released by Built In, a platform for tech professionals, out of 223 companies and employees in the tech industry that were interviewed, one in four said that more than 79% of their employees were white.
Black representation in tech specifically remains at low levels. According to a recent report created by the NAACP and Kapor Center, a nonprofit that works to address disparities in STEM fields and tech business, Black employees make up 13% of the U.S. workforce.
Despite this, they make up only 3.6% of tech employees. In terms of higher roles, national Black representation remains at just 3% of the board at tech companies and 4% of executive leadership roles.
