25+ Telling Diversity In High Tech Statistics [2023]: Tech Demographics + Trends

Research Summary. For the entirety of its existence, the tech industry has been exclusive and severely lacking in diversity. Women, in general, are gravely underrepresented in this growing and lucrative industry, and people of color constitute an even slimmer percentage of big tech.

Though major tech companies have started releasing diversity updates, the progress hoped for has yet to be achieved.

• 7.9% of the total US labor force works in tech as of 2021

• 26.7% of tech jobs are held by women, and men hold 73.3% of tech jobs

• In the US tech sector, 62% of jobs are held by white Americans. Black Americans hold 7% of jobs, Latinx Americans hold 8% of jobs, and Asian Americans hold 20% of jobs

• In the United States, 83.3% of tech executives are white

• In 2019, Black Americans accounted for 14% of the national population but occupied just 7% of tech jobs

• On average, women in tech are offered a salary of 3% less than men for the same job, at the same company, with the same experience

• Compared with industries in general, the high-tech industry employs more white workers (68.5% versus 63.5%), Asian Americans (14% versus 5.8%), and men (64% versus 52%)

• Compared to industries in general, the high-tech industry employs a smaller proportion of Black Americans (7.4% versus 14.4%), Latinx Americans (8% versus 13.9%), and women (36% versus 48%)

For further analysis, we broke down the data in the following ways:
Race and Ethnic | Gender | Over Time | Major Companies

Race and Ethnic Diversity in Tech Statistics

• White employees account for 62% of the tech industry labor force.

  In comparison, Black Americans represent 7% of tech employees, 8% of tech jobs are held by Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans account for 20% of the technology field.



• According to one study, Black job candidates in the tech industry received an eventual salary offer of $134,000, instead of white job applicants who were offered an average salary of $144,000 for the same position.

  These salary offers represent a wage gap difference of 6.95% in favor of white employees. Alternatively, Asian American job candidates in the tech industry were typically offered $145,000 after negotiations.



• As of 2020, 67% of tech companies are comprised of less than 5% Black employees.

  Though many big tech companies have promised up and down to do their part in changing these troubling statistics, fewer have made good on their word.

  For example, since 2014, Facebook has progressed ever so slightly from having 2% of their staff being Black employees to 3.8% in 2019. Twitter had a slight increase in the percentage of Black staff, rising from 2% to 6% between 2014 and 2019.

Gender Diversity in Tech Statistics

• Men hold a massive 73.3% of all tech jobs.

  This leaves women with a percentage of 26.7% of tech positions. Additionally, the women who manage to break into the competitive and male-dominated tech world are often met with lower pay for the same grade of work. On average, a Silicon Valley man will make 61% more than a Silicon Valley woman.

Year	Male	Female
2022	73.30%	26.70%
2021	73.20%	23.10%
2020	75.00%	25.00%
2019	75.98%	24.02%
2018	77.22%	22.78%
2017	76.53%	23.47%
2016	76.62%	23.38%
2015	76.49%	23.51%
2014	74.79%	25.21%
2013	74.42%	25.58%
2012	73.90%	26.10%
2011	72.49%	27.51%
2010	71.51%	28.49%

• In terms of leadership, men account for 79% of all executive tech roles.

  Women only hold 32% of director positions, 28% of supervising jobs, and 32% of individual contributor roles in the tech industry.

• One study found that the most common reason women are underrepresented in tech is a lack of mentors.

  This study interviewed 500 participants globally and compiled the most relevant opinions. Other reasons cited during the study included a lack of female role models in the field (42%), gender bias in the workplace (39%), unequal growth opportunities compared to men (36%), and unequal pay for the same skills (35%).

• According to one study in 2020, men were offered higher salaries than their equivalent female counterparts 59% of the time.

  The study was conducted on a job search platform that specializes in placing people with tech jobs. It found that men were offered a salary of 3% higher than women on average, but this also varied regionally.

  In the San Francisco Bay area, men were typically awarded a salary 5% higher than women in the same position, and in New York, this percentage was as high as 7%.

• Women hold 5% of the leadership jobs in the technology sector.

  Additionally, women only own 5% of all tech start-ups in the United States.

Diversity in Tech Over Time Statistics

• Over the past five years, the percentage of women in tech jobs at Facebook has grown from 15% in 2014 to 23% in 2019

• Over the last five years, Facebook has increased the number of Black women they hire by 25% and increased the number of black men they hire by 10%

• Between 2014 and 2019, the number of technical employees at Google who are Black or Latinx has risen less than 1%

Major Companies in Tech Diversity Statistics

• Between 2014 and 2019, the percentage of women working in technical positions at ten major tech companies in the U.S. only grew by 2%.

  Some major tech companies acknowledged their lack of diversity and started releasing their diversity reports after 2014. These reports have shown that there has been slight progress, but an emphasis on the word ‘slight.’

  Additionally, the data provided doesn’t account for nonbinary or transgender people. Only one out of the ten major tech companies mentioned above reported any gender nonbinary statistics.

• In 2021, 33.1% of the people hired at Google were women, and 66.9% were men.

  This represents a 1% increase in hiring women at Google from the previous year.



• In 2021, 44.5% of the people hired at Google were white.

  In comparison, 42.8% of the people hired at Google in 2021 were Asian, 8.8% were Black, 8.8% were Latinx, and 0.7% were Native American.

• Between 2014 and 2020, the number of employees from underrepresented communities (URC) at Apple has increased by 64%.

  This equates to roughly 18,000 people placed in jobs at Apple over the past six years. Individuals from underrepresented communities now make up almost half of Apple’s workforce.

• As of 2020, only 3.9% of the employees at Facebook are Black.

  In the same year, 6.3% of employees at Facebook were Latinx, 44.4% were Asian American, and 41% were white.

• In 2020, 4.9% of Microsoft employees were Black or African American in the United States.

  In comparison, 6.6% of the Microsoft workforce was Latinx, 0.7% was Native American, 34.7% was Asian, and 53.1% was white.

Diversity In High Tech FAQ

1. How diverse is the tech industry?

   The tech industry is not very diverse. Big tech drastically favors white and Asian men when it comes to their hiring and their salary offers. This has been a well-known problem since the inception of the industry itself.

   It wasn’t until 2014 that several influential tech companies started to acknowledge the lacking diversity on their staff and vowed to change this in the future. Yearly, they release diversity reports to show the public how far they’ve come.

   In the past six years, most of these companies and the tech industry as a whole haven’t completely delivered on their promises of increased inclusion. While there has been some positive progress regarding the diversity in big tech, it’s moving at a glacial pace.

2. Is Big Tech still struggling with diversity?

   Yes, the tech industry is still struggling with diversity. While big tech companies have put out a diversity report in recent years, the majority of workers are still White men.

   Most of the largest and most powerful tech companies around have only managed to improve their diversity statistics by a percentage or two in the past five years if they have demonstrated any positive movement at all.

   Many tech companies seem to treat the output of their diversity reports as a formality and rarely take direct action to improve their diversity. This proves to be a detrimental reality for diversity movements within high tech.

   Improving diversity in an industry that has spent decades being exclusive is about more than just putting out yearly updates. Sustainable action needs to be taken to end the struggle of diversity within the tech industry.

3. Why is diversity in tech important?

   Diversity in tech is important because it’s crucial in every facet of life – it allows for inclusivity and strengthens the environment as a whole.

   It is limiting to formulate a team almost entirely made up of people from one gender and one racial or ethnic background. It limits the perspectives on the team, and in turn, hurts the tech industry’s progress as a whole.

4. Is the tech industry worse than other industries in terms of diversity?

   The tech industry is worse than other industries in terms of diversity. Tech and computer science have the lowest rates of women and Black, Latinx, and Native American participants out of all the STEM-focused. Although women make up 57% of the workforce in the United States, 26% of technology positions are held by women.

   This situation is even more dire for women of color, who only represent 4% of tech roles even though they account for 16% of the population. When looking at leadership and executive roles, these percentages are spread even thinner to near nonexistence.

   While many other industries have a less than stellar record of diversity and inclusion, big tech is a major offender. In addition to that, the effort to correct this imbalance has been minimal.

5. Why is there a lack of diversity in tech?

   There is a lack of diversity in tech because of a lack of diversity in recruitment and a lack of role models for underrepresented groups. There are other reasons for the lack of diversity as well, but these are some of the main ones.

   When tech company recruiters are looking for new hires, they often tend to look in the same places where they’ve found great hires before. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with this, as it allows them to do their jobs more efficiently, but it does become a problem when those recruiting pools aren’t offering a diverse set of candidates.

   To combat this, tech recruiters need to expand their horizons to look to other pools that might be offering candidates of a different gender, ethnic background, or race. The tech industry as a whole also needs to encourage those schools and companies they pull from to find a more diverse set of individuals.

   A lack of role models for underrepresented groups is another big reason why there is a lack of diversity in tech. Young people choosing a career path aren’t going to be very interested in pursuing an occupation that doesn’t have people similar to them to look up to and model their career choices after.

6. What are underrepresented minorities in tech?

   Underrepresented minorities in tech include Black, Latino and Hispanic, Native American, and female employees. White workers make up a whopping 62% of the high-tech industry, Asian employees make up 20%, Hispanic and Latino workers account for 8%, and Black employees make up 7%.

   (Asian employees aren’t considered to be underrepresented in tech because they only make up 6% of the entire U.S. workforce, which means a 20% representation in the tech industry is quite high.)

   In addition, men hold 75% of all tech jobs, as opposed to the 46.8% of the U.S. workforce as a whole that they make up. Women also only hold 5% of the leadership positions and own 5% of startups in this industry.

   While big tech companies are recognizing these discrepancies as a problem and are beginning to work to fix them, they are still there and need to continue to be addressed.

7. What percentage of Black Americans work in high tech?

   Black workers make up 7% of people who work in high tech. In comparison, Black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. workforce as a whole, which means they are highly underrepresented in the tech industry.

   More specifically, Black Americans make up 8.8% of Google’s workforce, 3.9% of Facebook’s, and 4.9% of Microsoft’s. While these companies are trying to diversify their hires, progress has been slow: From 2014 to 2019, Google only increased the number of its Black and Hispanic or Latino employees by less than 1%.

   Facebook has had a bit more success over the past five years, bumping up the number of Black women on their staff by 25% and Black men by 10%.

   Salary discrepancies abound for Black tech employees as well, as the average negotiated salary this group gets is $134,000, while it’s $144,000 for white employees and $145,000 for Asian workers.

Conclusion

Diversity and inclusion have been topics of discussion within all modern-day industries, but it wasn’t until recently that big tech started considering them.

Tech is a huge industry that accounts for 7.7% of the total labor force in the United States, a percentage that’s growing larger every year. Despite the industry’s size and influence, it’s historically been highly exclusive with extremely low rates of staff who were people of color or female.

In 2014, some of the major tech companies like Google and Facebook started acknowledging that their diversity was highly lacking and agreed to start releasing reports to keep track of their continued efforts towards improving their diversity. Though these intentions were good, the immense progress promised has yet to arrive.

There have been some strides for women in tech. For example, the percentage of women in tech jobs at Facebook has jumped from 15% to 23% in five years. Across the top ten tech industries in the United States, though, the percentage of female staff only grew by 2%.

Women hired in a technical position will generally receive a lower salary offer than their male equivalent 59% of the time. On average, in the United States, a woman’s salary will be 3% lower than a man’s in the same tech job.

Progress has been moving at a dramatically slower pace for people of color in the tech industry. While Facebook has increased the number of Black women they hire by 25% and men by 10%, the company’s staff is still only 3.8% Black employees. This represents an increase of less than 2% since 2014.

These troubling statistics are true for people from a Latinx background as well – occupying 6.3% of the jobs at Facebook, 6.6% of the positions at Microsoft, and 8.8% of the roles at Apple with small movements in growth over the past five years. There is also a significant racial pay gap in the tech industry that comes into play.

According to one study, Black job candidates in the tech industry typically received an eventual salary offer of $134,000, whereas white candidates for the same position were offered $144,000.

The big tech industry has gotten the ball rolling on improving its diversity by recognizing that the problem exists and sharing reports with the public. However, in order to make significant positive movement, there needs to be more direct action taken towards fostering an inclusive environment.

References

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2. Pew Research Center. “STEM Jobs See Uneven Progress in Increasing Gender, Racial and Ethnic Diversity.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

3. EEOC. “DIVERSITY IN HIGH TECH.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

4. Pew Research Center. “The Growing Diversity of Black America.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

5. Business Insider. “How men and women’s salaries compare at Facebook, Google, Apple, and other top tech companies.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

6. The Wall Street Journal. “Black and Hispanic Job Seekers Still Face Wage Gap in Tech.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

7. Beam Jobs. “Racial Diversity In Tech By The Numbers.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

8. CNBC. “Tech companies say they value diversity, but reports show little change in last six years.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

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10. Bloomberg. “Men Got Higher Pay Than Women 59% of the Time for Same Tech Jobs”. Accessed on November 16, 2021

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12. CNBC. “Tech companies have made big promises, and small gains, for diversity and inclusion.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

13. Google. “Hiring changes drove our best year yet for women in tech globally and Black+ and Latinx+ people in the U.S..” Accessed on November 16, 2021

14. Apple. “Inclusion Diversity”. Accessed on November 16, 2021

15. Statistica. “Distribution of Facebook employees in the United States from 2014 to 2020, by ethnicity”. Accessed on November 16, 2021

16. Microsoft. “Microsoft’s 2020 Diversity Inclusion report: A commitment to accelerate progress amidst global change”. Accessed on November 16, 2021

17. Wired. “Five Years of Tech Diversity Reports—and Little Progress.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

18. Built-In. “Tech Shows Progress on Diversity, but There’s Still a Long Way to Go.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

19. SD Times. “There’s a diversity problem in the tech industry, and it’s not getting any better.” Accessed on November 16, 2021

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.