Google still struggling to diversify beyond white, Asian men

Google isn’t making much headway diversifying its workforce beyond white and Asian men, even though the Internet company hired women to fill one out of every five of its openings for computer programmers and other high-paying technology jobs last year. The imbalanced picture emerged in a demographic breakdown that Google released Monday. The report underscored the challenges that Google and most other major technology companies face as they try to add more women, blacks and Hispanics to their payrolls after many years of primarily relying on the technical skills of white and Asian men.

Early indications show promise, but we know that with an organization our size, year-on-year growth and meaningful change is going to take time.

Nancy Lee, Google’s vice president of people operations

Whites held 59 percent of Google’s tech jobs in the U.S., while Asians filled 35 percent of the positions, according to the report. The slight uptick in women stemmed from a concerted effort to bring the numbers up. Overall, Google employed 53,600 people at the end of 2014. In the U.S., just 2 percent of Google’s workers were black and 3 percent were Hispanic. Cutting across all industries in the U.S., 12 percent of the workforce is black and 14 percent is Hispanic.

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