Like most large tech companies these days, Amazon is mainly comprised of white males, as shown in diversity figures released by the company for the first time on Friday.
Amazon currently employs almost 150,000 people around the world, with 63 percent of its work force being male and 60 percent being white males.
"Amazon has hundreds of millions of customers who can benefit from diversity of thought," said Amazon in its report. "We are a company of builders who bring varying backgrounds, ideas, and points of view to inventing on behalf of our customers."
Most of the company's employees work in distribution centers, so the majority of its workforce isn't really tech-related. This is similar to Apple's workforce, which has most of its workforce in its retail store. According to Apple, 55 percent of its staff in the U.S. is white, with 15 percent being Asian, 11 percent Hispanic and 7 percent black.
"Our diverse perspectives come from many sources including gender, race, age, national origin, culture, education, as well as professional and life experience," continued Amazon on its website. "We are working to develop leaders and shape future talent pools to help us meet the needs of our customers around the world."
Despite being a company that sells products all over the world, Amazon was one of the last large tech companies to release employee diversity figures after companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter all did so earlier this year. The Rainbow Push Coalition, led by Rev. Jesse Jackson, along with publications such as USA Today have been pushing the company to release these figures for a while. Jackson reportedly even had discussions with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
While Amazon's report is expected, it is also rather troubling. While blacks make up 15 percent of the company's workforce, they only make up around 4 percent of its managers. Hispanics make up around 9 percent of its workforce, but again only make up 4 percent of manager positions. Asians were the only group to make up a larger number of managers, at 18 percent, as compared to its overall percentage of workers, at 13 percent. Women made up 37 percent of the Amazon workforce and 25 percent of the total number of managers.
The company went on to suggest that the lack of minorities and women in the workplace is largely due to the lack of encouragement for these people to study science and technology at school.
"We know that in middle school and high school, students are already deciding what professions they want to pursue," continued Amazon in its report. "More often than not female students and students of color are opting out of technology and engineering."
