Apple Inc. (AAPL) Reports Small Improvements in Workplace Diversity

Apple has committed to diversifying its new hires this year, and the company has just released some internal statistics on its progress. Last year, tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Pinterest started reporting their diversity figures to offer transparency about their workforce.

Intel has said that one way it plans to improve the diversity of its workforce is to incent employees to help drive diversity.

Said CEO Tim Cook in a statement, “Diversity is critical to innovation and it is essential to Apple’s future”.

But Jackson said he wants Apple and other tech companies to go beyond the federal report and provide more “comprehensive” data on hiring as well as purchasing and contracting with companies owned by women and minorities. As of September 2014, the company had 92,600 full-time employees. “Blacks and Hispanics each make up under 10 percent of U.S. college grads and each collect fewer than 10 percent of degrees in CS majors”. For instance, the number of whites in its payroll dropped 1% from 55% to 54%. Changes reflected about 7 months later were not significant with a.01% increase for Blacks and percentages that stayed the same for Hispanic and Native American groups. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff.

In the latest diversity numbers released Thursday, Apple wrote that in the past year, it hired more than 11,000 women globally, which is 65 percent more than in the previous year. Apple also broke out retail-specific data for the first time.

But Apple, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, said it was making progress in its diversity efforts.

“In total, this represents the largest group of employees we’ve ever hired from underrepresented groups in a single year”, Cook says. “We aspire to do extra than simply make our firm as numerous because the expertise obtainable to rent”.

Still, while not necessarily speaking about Intel or the other companies mentioned in this column, Rev. Jackson told USA Today last week that most companies “have been disappointingly slow” when it comes to improving diversity.

Intel said it is aiming to reflect the diversity of the available workforce. As the tech industry’s influence on global issues has grown, some Silicon Valley giants have come under increasing scrutiny over the treatment of women and minorities, with some companies facing high-profile lawsuits and charges of discrimination.

Although the company continues to introduce measures to raise workforce diversity, and invests a considerable amount towards the task also; its workforce diversification target is far from achieved.