- Snap released a diversity report Wednesday, breaking down its employee demographics for the public for the first time since the company was founded in 2011.
- Numbers show that in 2019, Snap comprised 6.8% Latinx and 4.1% Black employees. Sources told Business Insider that internal numbers shown to employees in 2018 identified 6% of employees Latinx and 3% staff Black.
- Business Insider reported in June that CEO Evan Spiegel told employees in an all-hands meeting that Snap wouldn't release diversity numbers because it would reinforce the perception that Silicon Valley isn't diverse.
- Snap's diversity numbers are in line with those at other tech companies: In 2019, Google reported 9.6% of employees were Black or Latinx, and Facebook disclosed 9% of its workforce were Black or Latinx. Twitter reported earlier this year that Latinx and Black employees made up about 11% of its workforce, while Apple says that 23% of its workers identify as Black or Latinx as of 2018.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Snap released its first-ever diversity report on Wednesday. In its nearly-nine-year history, the company has refused to release this data publicly as other tech companies have done, and has recently come under increased pressure from employees for that decision.
The company said it would continue to release a diversity report annually.
According to the report, 10.9% of Snap's workforce is Black or Latinx, and 32.9% of staff identify as women. Staff in positions of leadership — those who are director-level or above — are 2.6% Black and 2.6% Latinx.
The release of Snap's internal diversity numbers, for the year 2019, comes a month after Business Insider reported CEO Evan Spiegel had defended the company's decision to not release diversity numbers in an all-hands meeting. During the meeting, Spiegel told employees that releasing Snap's diversity data would reinforce the idea that minority groups are underrepresented in the tech industry. That meeting followed a report from Mashable where employees who worked at Snap between 2015 and 2018 alleged discrimination, including by leadership.
Earlier this month, the company launched an internal investigation into employee allegations of racism and sexism.
As part of Snap's report, the company has set a number of goals for its employee breakdown. The company is striving to double "the number of underrepresented US racial and ethnic minorities" by 2025. Snap is also setting a goal by 2023 to double the number of women in tech. Currently, only 16.1% of Snap's tech employees identify as women. Snap has also set a long-term goal to "reflect the racial and gender diversity (including non-binary) of the different places where we operate." According to the latest US Census, 13.4% of the population is Black, and 18.5% identify as Latinx.
Since its founding in 2011, Snap has not released a public diversity report. However, numbers have been presented internally to employees previously. According to 2018 demographic data shown to Business Insider, Snap reported that 6% of employees were Latinx, and 3% of employees were Black. The numbers also showed 32% of employees were women, sources said. For those at the director-level or above, only 1% of staff were Latinx and 2% were Black.
Compared to this 2018 data, Snap boosted its percentage of Black employees 1.1 percentage points, and its Latinx employees 0.8 percentage points in 2019.
Back in June, Spiegel told employees that the company's diversity numbers were in line with those at other tech companies, which have long skewed white and male. The demographic breakdown shown in Snap's numbers are not far from those reported by other major tech companies.
Major players in Silicon Valley started providing diversity reports in 2014, giving the public a glimpse into the demographic breakdown of their colossal workforces. In 2019 diversity reports, Google reported women made up only 32% of its employees and that only 9.6% were Black or Latinx. At Facebook, only 9% of its workforce were Black or Latinx. Twitter reported earlier this year that Latinx and Black employees made up about 11% of its workforce, while Apple says that 23% of its workers identify as Black or Latinx as of 2018.
The release of Snap's diversity numbers come as the company is conducting an internal investigation into allegations of racism and sexism at the company, Business Insider reported. Lawyers hired by Snap have been reaching out to former and current Snap employees asking if they experienced or witnessed discrimination during their time at Snap and Snapchat, and specifically inquired about stories ex-employees shared in a June 9 Mashable article that described racist behavior and editorial decisions on Snapchat's Our Stories team.
n June, former employees who identify as people of color told Mashable they experienced a racist culture, including from leadership, while working for Snapchat between 2015 and 2018. Managers censored or minimized coverage of predominantly Black content, including Black Lives Matter activity in 2016 and the hip-hop music festival Rolling Loud, according to the report.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Why electric planes haven't taken off yet