Google’s workforce is mostly made up of White men, a situation the tech giant says it is trying to change.
On Wednesday, Google Inc. for the first time released statistics documenting the diversity of its workforce, responding to escalating pressure on the technology industry to hire more minorities and women.
The numbers show 70 percent of the people working at the search giant are men, and 61 percent of the workers are White.
In a blog, Google’s senior vice president Laszlo Bock said: “Simply put, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity.”
The numbers are compiled as part of a report that major U.S. employers must file with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employers, though, are not required to make the information publicly available.
The ethnicity data shows another 30 percent of Google’s workforce is Asian, 3 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Black. The remaining 5 percent is listed as two or more races or other.
Google broke new ground with the disclosure. Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg recently said the social networking company is on the same path, but that it’s important to share the data internally first.
