Amazon releases diversity stats: Largely white, male

Amazon is the latest tech company to disclose how diverse its employees are.

Like other tech giants before it, the answer is not very.

{mosads}The Seattle-based retail titan announced on Friday that 63 percent of its global workforce is male, and 60 percent of U.S. employees are white. For managers, a full 75 percent are male, globally, and 71 percent are white, in the U.S.

The data are unsurprising. Many other tech companies that have revealed their internal diversity statistics in recent months have shown similarly large amounts of white men in their offices, especially at the top.

The prompting has been spurred by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push coalition, which criticized Amazon for failing to break out its data into more specific types of work, since black and Latino workers are assumed to dominate warehouse jobs.

“Rainbow Push is disappointed with the level of disclosure and we seek to meet with them soon to go deeper into the issue,” the coalition said.

“The virtual lack of inclusion in Silicon Valley and other tech companies like Amazon is a systemic problem,” it added.

Amazon was one of the holdouts in releasing data about its workers, as many companies including Twitter, Facebook and Google released details about their diversity this summer.

In disclosing the numbers, the online superstore explained how it was seeking to bring more minorities and women into the tech industry fold from early in their careers.

“We are working to develop leaders and shape future talent pools to help us meet the needs of our customers around the world,” it said.