Google achieved its largest rise in African American and Latin representation ever.
The search giant's recent 2022 Diversity Annual Report mentioned it had achieved its best hiring year yet in 2021, consisting of recruited women worldwide, Black+, and Latins hired in the US.
According to a message from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google previously vowed to improve representation for women, Black+, and Latins in 2020.
Google 2022 Diversity Annual Report
According to Google's Diversity Annual Report, the women it recruited made up around 37.5% of its hired worldwide in 2022, while it also achieved its best hiring year for Black+ and Latin recruits in the US.
Melonie Parker, Google's Chief Diversity Officer, presented the data to the world in a Google blog report.
Google remarked that the number of Black+ and Latin Googlers (or employees) in the U.S. is growing faster than the Googler community overall. This increase led to the company seeing its largest increase in representation of Black+ and Latin Googlers in the U.S. ever, with Black+ Googlers making up 20% of the Googler community, with Latins counting as 8%.
The company also mentioned that it had improved its leadership representation of Black+ Latin+ and Native American+ Googlers in the U.S. by 27%, while the representation of women in leadership is also up by 9% year over year.
Meanwhile, Black+ attrition in the U.S. became comparable to Google-wide attrition levels for the first time, meaning that the company is experiencing "promising" progress in the improved attrition for many of the company's intersectional communities, including Black+ women.
Finally, 87% of Google employees say they feel comfortable being themselves at work, marking a 3% increase year over year, while 91% say their workgroups value diverse perspectives, which is a 2% increase from 2020.
However, there is still some room for improvement in the case of Google's diversity. According to a report from The Verge, the company's U.S. workforce is 33.5% women and 66.5% men, a slight increase compared to the 32.2% - 67.8% split in 2021.
Additionally, Google said that 48.3% of its U.S. workers are white, while 43.2% are Asian, 6.9% are Latins, and 0.8% are Native American.
"A broad industry focus on representation and access is also important to us," Parker said.
Furthermore, Google expanded its initiative, Mind the Gap, that encourages women and girls to pursue STEM careers, or careers focusing on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. This initiative is part of Google's efforts for representation.
The company also continues to invest in communities and efforts that promote diversity and representation, such as the Latino Founders Fund, in a way that helps Latin founders retain ownership of their companies.
Google's Previous Trouble with Diversity
Google seems to be turning a new leaf with its recent diversity and representation promotion efforts after it fired its former top artificial intelligence researcher, Timnit Gebru, who is an African American herself.
According to Platformer, Gebru was removed from Google's roster due to an email expressing her frustration with her superiors who blocked her from publishing a research paper she was working on.
Google reportedly found the email "inconsistent with the expectations of a Google manager."
Gebru is a well-known and respected member of the AI ethics community.
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