Google admits its big diversity problem: Its workforce is 70% male and 61% white

Google published diversity statistics this morning about its workforce, with the tech giant admitting it has a long way to go on diversity.

The figures show the tech giant remains a male-dominated workplace, with women making up just 30% of its workforce, while 70% of its staff men.

The situation is not much better when it comes to ethnic diversity, with 61% of its staff identifying as white.

While Google does have a reasonable number of staff who identify as Asian (30%), just 2% of its workforce is black, 3% is Hispanic and a further 4% identifies as two or more races.

The tech giant notes its gender diversity figures are global, while its ethnicity data is from its US operations only.

In a statement, Google’s senior vice president of people operations, Laszlo Bock, admits the tech giant is “miles from where we want to be” in terms of the diversity of its workforce.

“We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts,” Bock says.

Bock also says women collect just 18% of all computer science degrees in the US, while blacks and Hispanics collect less than 5% of all US computer science majors. He says more diversity in education is an important part of the solution.