Silicon Valley Tech Workforce Is Vastly Different From US, Say Feds (computerworld.com)

Reader dcblogs shares an article on Computer World: In recent years, major high-tech firms have started releasing workforce diversity data, along with a promise to improve. And there is much room for improvement, according to federal officials. Among the top 75 Silicon Valley tech firms, whites make up 47% of the workforce, Asian Americans 41%, Hispanics, 6% and African Americans 3%, according to an analysis by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Women account for 30% of the workforce at these 75 firms. The diversity makeup of these Silicon Valley high-tech firms is very different from the national employment picture. When compared to overall private industry employment, the tech sector nationally -- not just Silicon Valley -- employed a larger share of whites (63% to 68%), as well as a larger share of Asian Americans (6% to 14%) and a smaller share of African Americans (14% to 7%) and Hispanics (14% to 8%). Employers with a workforce greater than 100 file reports to the EEOC about their employees' race, color, gender and national origin. Nationally, 64% of the employees in high-tech are men versus 52% in the broader workforce. Women account for 36% of the tech workforce, versus comprising 48% of the broader workforce.

Comments

Desi Indians?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, my takeaway from this is that Indians (i.e. from the subcontinent, not the reservation) self-report as white.

Parental education is a large factor

[davidwr]

If you look only at 2nd-generation-or-more Americans (those whose parents were born and raised in America), parental education probably accounts for most of the difference for Whites, African-Americans, and Hispanics.

High-tech is typically skewed towards the highly-trained, which is correlated with parents who value education.

Among those whose parents aren't immigrants, having parents who value education is correlated to having educated parents. Having educated parents is also correlated to growing up in a middle-class-or-higher household.

Thanks to American's sad history of racial discrimination, having educated parents is also highly correlated to being non-Hispanic white and negatively correlated with being anything else, at least with respect to people whose parents were raised in the United States.