Google’s 2022 Diversity Report Sees Largest Increase of Black, Latinx Representation in the US

Google has released the diversity report for the year 2022, and the company reported that it had made significant progress over the past year since it logged its "largest increases in representation of Black and Latinx Googlers in the US," with 20 percent and 8 percent increase year over year.

Improved Leadership Representation

Google's Chief Diversity Officer Melonie Parker said that the tech giant has also reported improved leadership representation of Black, Latinx, and Native American employees by 27 percent.

The year 2020 saw not just the rise of the COVID-19 virus but also the reignition of the Black Lives Matter movement over cases of police violence targeted to Black people. This prompted several companies to pledge efforts to combat racism.

But more importantly, in December 2020, the company was under public scrutiny for its diversity policies when it fired well-known Black AI ethicist Timnit Gebru. Since then, Google has made various changes to its diversity and research policies two months later.

Google is now proud to report that in 2021, the number of employees coming from underrepresented communities at the company increased more quickly - "with Black representation growing 2x faster than Googlers overall."

The company said that this growth is largely attributable to "their strong hiring efforts in 2021," recording their "largest percentages ever" of Latinx+ and Black+ new hires in the US and also for women new hires globally.

But a closer look at the data indicates that there is still a need for improvements. Women in Google's US workforce, for instance, only comprise 33.5 percent, while men make up the majority at 66.5 percent. This is only a slight increase from last year's 32.2 percent for women and 67.8 percent for men.

Overall, Google's 2022 Diversity report noted that 48.3 percent of its US workers are white, while 43.2 percent are Asian, 6.9 percent are Latinx, 5.3 percent are Black, and 0.8 percent are represented by Native Americans.

Eliminating Biases in Hiring

Google further noted that in 2021, their recruiting team focused on coming up with strategies and initiatives to ground their hiring efforts with equity - such as growing their Inclusive Hiring Steps and Culture Add training to ensure that managers and recruiters can "eliminate personal biases in hiring."

The company reported that these trainings included over 10,000 Googlers, which is a reach doubled over the last three years. They also cooperated with Color in Tech to hire more Black talents for their team.

This partnership enabled Google to help sponsor the Black Tech Fest conference, which brought more than 4,000 tech experts together to "share knowledge, build new relationships, and more.

Google also produced equity commitments through an Equity Program Management office, which included input from members of their Black Googlers Network employee resource group and Black Leadership Advisory Group.

They also introduced a student loan repayment program to help economically-challenged students who are in debt, particularly for women and communities of color in the US. It is worth noting that Black Googlers were the ones who suggested this program.

If you want to learn more information about Google's diversity efforts and its statistics, you can find them on the 2022 Diversity Annual Report website and also in the PDF version of the report.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla