Facebook makes little progress in race, gender diversity: report

By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Sai Sachin R

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc's employees are still mainly white or Asian males as the world's largest social network made little progress in hiring a more diverse talent pool over the past year, it said on Thursday.

The findings in Facebook's annual diversity report reflects the scant progress made by Silicon Valley heavyweights in employing more women and minorities.

Last month, Alphabet Inc's Google released data on diversity, saying it had more black, Latino and female employees than last year, but still lagged its goal of mirroring the population.

Women represented 33 percent of Facebook's global workforce as of June 30, compared with 32 percent a year earlier, the report said. Women held 27 percent of senior leadership roles, up from 23 percent a year earlier. (https://bit.ly/29Vvr9W)

Facebook said 3 percent of its senior leadership in the United States was black, up from 2 percent a year earlier.

Among its U.S. technology workers, Facebook made no progress among two groups. In both 2015 and 2016, Hispanics made up 3 percent of tech employees while blacks made up 1 percent.

Facebook's overall U.S. workforce includes 4 percent of Latinos and 2 percent of blacks, unchanged from last year, the report said.

Asians represented 38 percent of Facebook's U.S. workforce and 21 percent of its senior leadership.

The majority of Facebook's global tech employees, at 83 percent, are men, down marginally from last year's 84 percent.

In a voluntary survey of Facebook's U.S. employees about sexual orientation, 7 percent self-identified as being lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender or asexual. It was the first time the company released LGBTQ data about its staff.

Facebook is taking several steps to hire more minority workers, Maxine Williams, global director of diversity, said in a blog post on Thursday. These include a $15 million grant over five years to code.org, which expands computer science training to women and underrepresented populations.

(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco and Sai Sachin R in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Richard Chang)