Amazon.com AMZN +2.12% released workplace diversity figures for the first time on Friday and they did little to set the Seattle online retailer apart from its tech industry peers.
Amazon, which employs more than 88,400 around the world according to its careers website, noted that its workforce was, unsurprisingly, composed of most white males. Some 63% of its “Amazonians” were male, while white employees made up 60% of the workplace. Those percentages were even higher for employees in managerial positions, of which 75% were male and 71% were white.
“Amazon has hundreds of millions of customers who can benefit from diversity of thought,” read Amazon’s report. “We are a company of builders who bring varying backgrounds, ideas, and points of view to inventing on behalf of our customers.”
While the company sells products in diverse regions from India to Germany, Amazon was one of the few remaining large American technology companies not to share employee diversity numbers following voluntary disclosures from the likes of Facebook, Twitter TWTR -0.79%and Google GOOGL +1.33%. Last month, the company was pressured by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition and publications like USA Today to release race and gender breakdowns of its workforce. Jackson also reportedly had discussions with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Read More
