Even as the tech industry has taken steps over the past decade to diversify their hiring practices—with a particular emphasis on recruiting and retaining Black and Latino employees—progress has been slow. And amid economic challenges over the past year, many companies have laid off employees tasked with DEI work or quietly pulled back on the investments they made in 2020. Since the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action in 2023, corporate DEI initiatives have also become the target of legal attacks from conservative activists.
But a new report that analyzes Latino representation in the tech sector—produced as a collaboration between the Kapor Foundation, Hispanic Heritage Foundation, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, and SomosVC—underscores the value of DEI work at a time when it is under fire. While Latinos make up nearly 19% of the U.S. population and account for about one in five workers, the report finds that they only represent one in every 10 workers across the tech industry.
This representation only narrows further in the executive ranks, an issue that has long been evident from the demographic data published by major tech companies. Per the report, which compiled data from company diversity reports, Latinos hold only 5% of executive leadership positions and 3% of board roles in tech. When it comes to technical roles, Latino workers only account for 6% of the workforce at tech companies based in the U.S. At the current rate of progress, it will take more than 50 years for Latino technical workers to achieve parity in the industry—until the year 2077, according to the report.
Even when companies do recruit more diverse tech workers, wage disparities persist: The report notes that while pay inequities improved in 2020, those gains have since slipped away. As of 2022, for every dollar earned by white men in the industry, Latino tech workers earn 3% less—and the gap widens to 8% among Latinas.
As the report notes, when tech employers make cuts to DEI teams, it doesn’t just derail their efforts to build a diverse workforce that better represents the demographics of the country. Those roles are more likely to be filled by underrepresented employees, particularly after 2020, when companies made public commitments to redouble their DEI efforts.
And when companies make job cuts, more recent hires—as well as employees with less experience—can be the first to go. With so many tech companies resorting to layoffs over the past two years, Latino workers have been significantly impacted: An analysis from last year found that Latinos accounted for 11.5% of laid off tech workers in fall 2022, despite only representing 10% of the industry.
