REUTERS: Google employees who identified as “Black+” or “Latinx+” left at higher rates last year than in 2019, according to the company’s latest annual diversity report https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/diversity.google/en//annual-report/static/pdfs/google 2021 diversity annual report.pdf, highlighting a persistent challenge to growing representation. In the United States, the attrition index, which starts at 100, was at 121 last year for Black+ workers, compared to 112 in 2020. It increased from 97 to 105 among Latinx+ employees last year. For Black+ women, attrition increased to 146 from 110, while for Latinx+ women, it decreased to 81 from 93.
Attrition among White+ people fell to 112 from 117, with both men and women affected.
Last year, Google pledged to increase support staffing and programs to increase retention of ethnic minorities and other groups. However, some people from underrepresented backgrounds have stated that they continue to feel unwelcome in the tech industry, and that they are in great demand elsewhere as corporations compete to diversify their workforce. Google declined to comment beyond its latest study, which stated that while there is still space for improvement in terms of keeping minority talent, new training and policies are showing positive results. Civil rights organizations and activist investors are lobbying Silicon Valley corporations like Google to hire more women and minorities in executive positions, claiming that this will result in better commercial results.
Google has made some progress. Last year, the corporation nearly quadrupled the number of Black+ persons in leadership in the United States to 7.1 percent, and raised the number of women in leadership internationally to 28.9 percent from 26.1 percent. Last year was the strongest year for hiring of Black+ and Latinx+ U.S. workers since it began tracking statistics in 2014, with 8.8% of overall hires coming from each of those categories, compared to 5.5 percent for Black+ in 2019 and 6.6 percent for Latinx+ in 2019. Despite this, Black+ women made up only 1.8 percent of technology hiring, with Latinx+ women accounting for the same percentage. (Paresh Dave contributed reporting, and Richard Chang edited the piece.)/n
