Facebook makes diversity gains but struggles in key area
Proportion of Hispanic, African-American workers in tech roles remains flat
Facebook made progress in improving the gender and racial balance of its workers, with women, African Americans and Hispanics all gaining more representation in the Silicon Valley company’s ranks over the past year
Women now make up 35% of Facebook’s global workforce, up from 33%, and hold 19% of technical roles, up from 17%, the company said Wednesday.
Three percent of U.S. Facebook workers are African American, up from 2%, and 5% are Hispanic, up from 4%. This marks the first time Facebook has increased the percentage of African Americans since it began publicly reporting its workforce demographics three years ago.
But the giant social network fell short where the lack of diversity is most acute, in the proportion of African-American and Hispanic workers in technical roles, which has stayed flat at 1% and 3%, respectively, since 2014.
The percentage of African Americans and Hispanics in senior leadership positions has also remained largely unchanged over that period. A big part of the problem, according to Facebook’s global diversity chief Maxine Williams: Too few people of color have the specialized education and training for technical roles at Facebook, and too few of them apply for jobs there.
African Americans now make up 6% of Facebook workers in non-technical roles, up from 2% in 2014, and Hispanics make up 8%, up from 6%, Williams noted.
“It’s the same company,” she said. “If there was this awful culture that was rejecting people, it would play out in that space as well.”
Last year, Facebook came under fire for blaming the recruitment “pipeline” for the low numbers of African Americans and Hispanics in technical roles, prompting a protest with the hashtag #FBNoExcuses.
Pressure to employ a more diverse team is only intensifying as Facebook laps the globe. Having women and underrepresented minorities brainstorming and building, not just using, the products dreamed up by Facebook is quickly becoming a business necessity. The giant social network announced in June it reaches 2 billion users each month.
“If anything, it’s a bigger priority,” Williams said.
Facebook has made the biggest strides in bringing more women into technical roles. According to Williams, women account for 27% of new graduate hires in engineering and 21% of new technical hires. Tech firms have been pouring resources and money into diversity efforts since Google ushered in a wave of disclosure about workforce diversity in 2014 when it reported its lopsided demographics for the first time.
Observers blame the paucity of women and people of color on the recruiting methods and insular corporate cultures of these companies, especially in Silicon Valley, which historically has been dominated by white and Asian men. At Facebook, 49% of employees are white, 40% are Asian.
A USA TODAY analysis of the employment records of Facebook, Google and Yahoo in 2014 revealed that minorities are sharply underrepresented in non-technical jobs such as sales and administration, with African Americans faring noticeably worse than Hispanics.
In 2016, Facebook employed 152 black men and 107 black women, and 291 Hispanic men and 212 Hispanic women, out of a total of 11,241 employees, according to Facebook’s EEO-1, the report on its workforce demographics it files each year with the federal government that the company released Wednesday. Facebook had refused USA TODAY’s earlier requests for the report.