White men still account for majority of tech firm’s top jobs in US
As a company renown for its creativity and innovation it will come as a surprise to many that when it comes to workforce diversity Apple’s performance appears to need some improvement.
The company published its Equal Employment Opportunity, which showed that 72 per cent of its most senior US employees were white men.
Of the 83 top execs, there were 12 white women and two black women, seven asian men and one asian women but no people of any other race.
Figures for the rest of the company showed similar levels of diversity with 61 per cent of employees identified as white while 71 per cent were male.
Asian employees accounted for 16.3 per cent of the wider workforce with hispanic employees making up 11.5 per cent.
However, only 8 per cent were black, 0.5 per cent native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 0.4 per cent american indian or Alaskan native.
Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook acknowledged the importance of diversity to the organisation, saying: “Diversity is critical to innovation and it is essential to Apple’s future.”
He also said that improving workforce diversity was a priority for the firm’s recruiters and that the firm had made some progress.
In the past year, Cook said Apple had hired more than 11,000 women globally (65 per cent more than in the previous year), while in the US, it had recruited more than 2,200 black employees (a 50 per cent increase) and 2,700 hispanic employees (a 66 per cent increase).
In total, this represents the largest group of employees we’ve ever hired from under-represented groups in a single year, he said.
And in the first six months of this year, nearly 50 per cent of the people employed by the tech giant in the US were women, black, hispanic, or native american.
Cook said: “As you can see, we’re working hard to expand our recruiting efforts so we continue hiring talented people from groups that are currently underrepresented in our industry.”
The employer has also initiated education schemes such as the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which helps black, asian and minority ethnic students find opportunities in technology, as well as setting up programmes to help students learn to code.
“We are proud of the progress we’ve made, and our commitment to diversity is unwavering. But we know there is a lot more work to be done,” Cook said.
“Some people will read this page and see our progress. Others will recognise how much farther we have to go. We see both.”