Main image of article Surprise! Facebook's Workforce is White and Male, Too
Facebook has released figures showing the diversity of its workforce and, as with Google and Yahoo before it, the numbers depict a company that's overwhelmingly male and white. Men constitute 69 percent of the company's overall employee base, and 85 percent of the technical team. Fifty seven percent of the overall workforce is white, while 34 percent is Asian, 4 percent is Hispanic and 2 percent is black. Looking at technical employees, 53 percent are white, 41 percent are Asian, 3 percent are Hispanic and 1 percent are black. Find Jobs in the Silicon Valley area. "As these numbers show, we have more work to do – a lot more. But the good news is that we’ve begun to make progress," wrote Maxine Williams, Facebook's Global Head of Diversity, in a blog post revealing the figures. The company, she said, is "absolutely committed to achieving greater diversity at Facebook and across the industry." Since launching a "strategic diversity team" last year, she said the company is seeing improved figures in terms of both new hires and retention rates. None of the reports by Facebook, Yahoo or Google are surprising: People have known tech is a largely white and male world for some time. Companies say the lack of diversity reflects the pool of available talent and emphasize their efforts to encourage more women and minorities to pursue STEM degrees as a long-term solution. Some observers, however, say diversity is a governance issue: If leaderships wanted their workforce to be more diverse, they would be. Last month, Google kicked off what's becoming a stream of announcements by tech companies sharing their diversity figures. Google said that just 30 percent of its employees are women, 3 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are black. Several weeks later, Yahoo revealed its numbers: In the U.S., 50 percent of its employees are white, 39 percent are Asian, 4 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are black.

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Chart: Facebook