Amazon releases diversity goals
Black, Latino, female workers underrepresented in higher salaries.
Amazon published the most detailed look yet at its workforce demographic data, showing what many critics of the company have long suspected: Black, Latino and female employees are underrepresented in the best-paid jobs at Amazon.
The only segment where the number of women reflects countrywide demographics is among the company’s nearly 850,000 U.S. employees working lower-paid jobs, including in warehouses. Black and Latino workers are overrepresented in that slice of Amazon employees.
Amazon released the data as it announced wide-ranging workforce diversity goals for the next year. The company plans to increase its representation of Black employees and women among its corporate workforce, including by doubling the number of Black executives and hiring 30% more women for senior technology roles. Amazon also plans to hire 30% more Black employees to work as product managers, engineers, designers and in other corporate roles.
Amazon will begin inspecting data on retention and performance ratings by race, gender and ethnicity to “identify root causes” of any disparities and “as necessary, implement action plans” to ensure that the company retains employees at statistically similar rates across all demographics, Amazon’s head of human resources,
Beth Galetti, wrote in a blog post. All employees will be required to take inclusion training, and Amazon will begin rooting out racially insensitive terms in its code base, Galetti added. Other companies have recently taken similar steps to change programming terms like “master” and “slave” that recall racist history.
“This is some of the most important work we have ever done, and we are committed to building a more inclusive and diverse Amazon for the long term,” Galetti said in the blog post. “I am grateful to the many employees who continue to share their experiences with me and other senior leaders.”
Among Amazon’s entry-level and midlevel corporate workers, women were 31% of the workforce last year, while Black and Latino workers each made up roughly 7% of the workforce. Asian employees comprised roughly 35% of those corporate employees, while white workers made up 47%.
Diversity figures are most skewed among Amazon executives. Just 22% of Amazon executives globally are women. Seventy-one percent of Amazon executives in the U.S. are white, 20% are Asian, and a combined 8% identify as Black or Latino.