What you need to know
- Google has published its latest annual diversity report, which shows promising progress.
- The report says Google had the "best hiring year yet for women globally," as well as Black+ and Latinx+ hires in the U.S.
- However, female employees are still underrepresented compared to male employees.
Google is making progress to improve the representation of Black and Latinx employees in its workforce. According to its 2022 Diversity Annual Report, the company hired more Black and Latinx employees over the last year in the United States.
Melonie Parker, Google's chief diversity officer, wrote in a blog post that the search giant saw its "largest increases in representation of Black+ and Latinx+ Googlers in the U.S. ever." Google grew its hiring of Black and Latinx employees by 20% and 8%, respectively, year over year.
However, these demographics are still underrepresented compared to white and male employees in the U.S. This means only 5.3% of Googlers are Black employees, up from 4.4% in its 2021 report. Latinx employees also increased from 6.4% last year to 6.9% at present.
Parker noted that this rate is faster "than the Googler community overall," adding that Google's leadership representation of Black, Latinx and Native American employees grew by 27 percent.
Meanwhile, white employees account for almost half of the U.S. workforce, at 48.3%, a slight decrease from 50.4% last year. Asian employees make up 43.2%, while Native American representation remains unchanged at 0.8%.
That said, the report reveals that Google still has a long way to go in terms of improving female representation in its U.S. workforce. In 2022, men account for 67.8% of the workforce, while 33.5% are women. That represents only a slight change from Google's 2021 diversity report.
Nonetheless, Google saw a drop in attrition rates across almost every demographic compared to last year. You can find a wealth of information about these statistics on its diversity report web page.
"Overall, Black+ attrition in the U.S. was comparable to Google-wide attrition levels for the first time ever," Parker said. "We are also seeing promising progress in the improved attrition for many of our intersectional communities, including Black+ women."
The Mountain View-based tech giant has vowed to improve hiring and retention for Native American+ employees, and retention for Black+ and Latinx+ men outside of technology.
Google's new commitment comes more than a year after it came under scrutiny for its treatment of Black female employees. In December, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing launched a probe into the search giant following multiple complaints of discrimination and harassment filed by Black female workers.
