Facebook nearly doubled the number of its black and Hispanic employees last year, but those groups are still starkly underrepresented at the tech giant. In 2014, black and Hispanic employees made up 5.4 percent of all workers, up from 4.4 percent in 2013.
The numbers are worse for African-Americans, who make up about 1.5 percent of all employees. In 2014, the company nearly doubled its staff of black employees to 81 from 45, improving its recruitment from the previous year. In 2013, Facebook hired seven black employees, according to public employment data.
Hispanic hiring also improved last year, up to 215 employees from 141 in 2013.
Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have drawn strong criticism for a lack of gender and racial diversity in their workforces. Google, Apple and Facebook acknowledge that they do not do enough to recruit and hire women, blacks and Hispanics and to promote them to executive positions.
They often point to a problem with the education pipeline, with not enough students of color and women going into computer science.
The percentage of black and Latino college graduates in engineering is higher than the percentage of those getting hired at companies such as Facebook, but the company said many of those engineering candidates are in unrelated fields such as chemical and mechanical engineering.
Facebook has started recruiting from more historically black universities and created an internship for women and minorities whom they hope to groom into full-time employees.
“We are trying desperately to have a more diverse workforce and deal with the constraints on the pipeline,” said Maxine Williams, the global head of diversity at Facebook. “This will take time, though, and we are committed for the long run. The effort doesn’t pay out in 365-day cycles.”
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