Facebook released its updated diversity report Thursday showing the results of its efforts to improve the diversity of its workforce since last year. However, to critics' dismay, there wasn't much of a difference from its previous report. More than half of its employees are white, while black employees make up only 2 percent of the workforce.
Last year, Maxine Williams, Facebook's Global Director of Diversity, presented the details of the social networking giant's workforce, including the gender and ethnicity of tech, non-tech and senior level positions. The report revealed 69 percent of the employees, including those from other sites across the world, were male and 57 percent were white. Only 2 percent of the workforce was black.
This year's report is disappointing to see since there weren't any major improvements—Facebook's staff is still dominated by whites and males at 55 percent and 68 percent, respectively.
There wasn't any change with the leadership positions either because only 23 percent of the senior jobs at Facebook were given to women, exactly the same amount as last year.
The social networking site is aware that they failed to keep their commitment even after investing in training minorities and women so they could apply for higher positions within the company.
"While we have achieved positive movement over the last year, it’s clear to all of us that we still aren’t where we want to be. There’s more work to do," wrote Williams in a blog post.
Tech companies claim they struggle with improving their workforce diversity due to the qualifications of candidates, an excuse that diversity advocates don't agree on.
“The skills gap alone still doesn’t account for these disparities,” said Wade Henderson, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, according to the New York Times. “These companies also employ accountants, lawyers, administrative support and professionals from other fields where there are massive pools of talent in communities of color.”
