After spending two years and $265 million on the effort, Google’s employee population was only 2% black in 2016, the same percentage as it was in 2014. Fifty-nine percent of Googlers are white, 32% are Asian, 3% are Hispanic, and 3% identified as a mix of two or more ethnicities. A roundup of diversity reports, gathered by The Hacker Life in March, finds similar numbers at many tech companies.
In the U.S., African-Americans and Hispanics make up 26% of the population over the age of 21, Knatokie Ford, the former senior policy adviser for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, recently told Essence. But they make up only 11% of the workforce in industries related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “To see something significant where we’re actually hitting a market supply, you know, of 10% or something like that of hispanic and black Googlers, that’s going to take several years,” Nancy Lee, the company’s former diversity chief, told the PBS NewsHour in July.