Wells Fargo’s CEO Charles W. Scharf came under fire in 2020 when he blamed the bank’s issue for reaching diversity goals on a “limited pool of Black talent.” Unfortunately, financial services isn’t the only industry with an inclusion problem. Tech has notoriously been a white male dominated field, with minimals in-roads for change. As Wired stated, despite promises to do better in 2014, the numbers haven’t improved much over the last eight years.
With a constantly evolving workforce that demands more advanced skills from workers, tech jobs are essential to keeping the global economy moving forward. However, with a reported 822,000 job posts for emerging tech areas, not enough Black women are being considered for the roles. And according to new data from NPower and Emsi Burning Glass, it’s not because they’re unqualified.
The two joined forces to analyze tech jobs across 10 U.S. markets and recently published their findings in a report that uncovered an interesting insight: “there are currently 250K women of color who could be working in tech right now if tech companies were able to rewire their hiring practices to consider more diverse job experiences, skills, and qualifications”.
The report further concluded that if tech companies considered this, the talent pool would open to more than 2.6 million more women of color.
This is particularly important because of the 4,700,000 tech workers in the U.S. today, Black, Latinx and American Indian women make up only 5% (that’s 225,000).
This vast underrepresentation in the market is not only affecting those locked out of the industry, but also the Black women in tech who are facing challenges being the only one in their company.
“Even when they do land tech jobs, Black women can encounter many challenges their coworkers don’t, ranging from extra personal and work responsibilities to cultural misunderstanding and biases at work, as well as the ongoing effects of historic disinvestment and lack of generational wealth,” BuiltIn.com pointed out.