University of Massachusetts Study Examines Workforce Diversity in Silicon Valley Firms

A new report from the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst finds that White and Asian men continue to dominate the workforces of large Silicon Valley companies. The authors of the study used data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to calculate executive, managerial, and professional employment data by race and gender for 177 leading Silicon Valley tech firms, comparing them to 1,277 smaller tech firms.

The data showed that 70 percent of total managerial and tech professionals in the large Silicon Valley Tech firms are men. White men are the most common group, holding 38.7 percent of professional jobs, 46.5 percent of management positions and 58.7 percent of executive jobs.

The report found that on average, Black men make up less than 1.5 percent of employees in all three job levels studied. While Black men are more than 3 percent of executives in 16 firms, and all but seven firms have at least one black male employee, 71 percent have none at the executive ranks.

Black women are rare in all professional, management and executive jobs. There are 10 firms with no Black women at all, and the overall median proportion of Black women is close to zero in all firms.

“These firms already know how to develop innovative products, compete in dynamic global markets, hire in competitive labor markets and are rapidly transforming our world,” the authors state. “It’s difficult to come up with a plausible reason why many cannot manage diversity.”

The full report, Is Silicon Valley Tech Diversity Possible Now?, may be downloaded by clicking here.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Higher Education Gifts or Grants of Interest to African Americans

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

In Memoriam: Maxine Mimms, 1928-2024

Dr. Mimms served as a faculty member at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington for two decades, including 10 years as the founding director of the college's Tacoma campus.

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

Nonwhite Patients Are Significantly More Likely to Have Preventative Care Insurance Claims Denied

Scholars from the University of Toronto have found non-White patients are nearly twice as likely as White patients to have an insurance claim denied. On average, they also pay more out-of-pocket costs when their claims are denied.

Featured Jobs