It’s no secret that Silicon Valley has a diversity problem. That became evident after the disclosure of workforce-diversity statistics last year at Google Inc., Facebook Inc., and other tech firms, which showed that some of the biggest corporate names—and wealth generators—in the U.S. employ small numbers of African-American and Hispanic professionals and a disproportionate number of male employees.
Those numbers may be obscuring a more nuanced picture of the tech labor market, one that shows strong progress for racial minorities, though not for women, according to a paper to be released Thursday by the Progressive Policy Institute.
The Washington think tank found that in 2014, black and Hispanic workers comprised more than 12% of total tech employment, compared to 9% in 2009.
The number of black college graduates in tech jobs grew by 58% during that time, with large increases among computer programmers, software developers, database administrators, and network and computer systems analysts. Hispanic employment in tech jobs rose by 103%. Read More »