Amazon has more Black and Hispanic employees than ever, but most people in top jobs are still white and male

The top jobs at Amazon, the nation’s second-largest employer, continue to go disproportionately to people who are white and male despite the company’s pledges to have its workforce and leadership better reflect the consumers it serves, new workforce data show.

About two-thirds of all employees were people of color in 2020, a dramatic increase from 40% in 2014. The growth has made Amazon’s total workforce more nonwhite than the U.S. population as a whole. 

But the bulk of Amazon’s gains in representation came from blue-collar jobs, in which Black and Hispanic employees are now nearly a majority after a hiring surge to meet consumer demand that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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Of the 2,610 employees Amazon classified as executives in 2020, 71% were white and 76% were men. 

More than half were white and male, a group that makes up only about a third of the U.S. workforce. White women comprise 30% of all U.S. workers but 17% of Amazon executives.

Just 37 Amazon executives (1.4%) were Black women, who are 6% of the national labor force. Only 26 (less than 1%) were Hispanic women, who are 7% of the U.S. workforce, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Amazon told USA TODAY it is making progress in reaching its diversity goals. The company plans to examine demographic differences in performance ratings and attrition. 

For the second straight year, it also plans to double the number of Black employees at the director and vice president levels and increase the number of Black software development engineer interns by at least 40%.

“Our work in diversity, equity, and inclusion is not new, and this data highlights our progress towards creating a more global diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce at Amazon,” spokesman Brad Glasser said in a statement.

Amazon releases workforce data after pressure campaign

The new numbers for Amazon’s workforce come from forms that employers who have 100 or more employees and federal contractors who have 50 or more employees must submit each year to the federal government.

These “EEO-1” reports break down the race and gender of the company’s workforce by job categories. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission historically has refused to release the data publicly.

Amazon used to voluntarily disclose its EEO-1 reports to the public but stopped after 2016. The company agreed to resume after a pressure campaign from New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who advises the largest city in America's public retirement funds.

Corporations are often reluctant to disclose EEO-1 data for fear of being cast in a negative light. They also contend that the data they publish in annual diversity reports better reflects their workforce than the data collected by the federal government. 

“The job categories on the EEO-1 report can be wide-ranging and, in many ways, are different than how we think about job categories and specialties at Amazon,” Glasser said.

One advantage of the federal reports, researchers say, is that all companies must use the same definitions for classifying jobs, race, ethnicity and gender, which makes it easier to accurately compare employers and track trends over time.

A record 54 corporations, including Target, CVS Health, Bank of America, Ford Motor Co. and Merck, gave USA TODAY their EEO-1 forms earlier this year, many of them disclosing the data for the first time. The companies, including Amazon, are part of the Standard & Poor’s 100, a stock index of the nation's most valuable companies.

Some gains came from expanding definition of executive

Although diversity numbers among Amazon’s executive ranks have risen in recent years, some of the gains were a result of changes in who’s counted as an executive.

As recently as 2016, Amazon listed only 105 executive positions. Of those, 93% were white and 78% were men. White people hold 63% of all U.S. jobs, and men of any race account for 53% of U.S. workers.

In the 2020 EEO-1 disclosure Amazon has now shared with the public, the company expanded the executive category to include every employee at the vice president and director level. People in these jobs had been categorized as midlevel managers.

The change swelled Amazon’s executive ranks by 2,385%, to more than 2,610 people – an unusually large number. 

Among dozens of the nation’s largest companies reviewed by USA TODAY, only three reported having more executives. All were banks. Among the nation’s biggest tech brands, executives numbered in the hundreds. Among retailers who shared their figures with USA TODAY, the only company to come close to Amazon’s executive numbers was Target, with 777. 

Relabeling some managers as executives made Amazon’s executive ranks look more diverse compared with previous years. 

The category change increased the number of nonwhite people in executive jobs by 749, including 609 women. The percentage of executives who are not white almost tripled, and the share of executives who are women increased by 33%. 

Yet even with the rosier picture of Amazon’s executive ranks that it achieved by counting certain managers as executives, people of color remained underrepresented in the company’s top jobs.

To make sure Amazon executives matched the demographics of the U.S. workforce, the company would have had to increase its executive ranks by 954 people of color and 1,285 women. That’s 205 more people of color and 676 more women than Amazon added to its list by redefining “executive.”

“Amazon continues to follow the pattern of many other tech companies,” Shireen Mitchell, a technology veteran and workplace diversity advocate, said in an email. “They repeat that they will do better but the data show those statements to be false in practice.”

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Amazon employed a more representative workforce below the level of executive.

Black employees accounted for about a third of the company’s laborers and 11.2% of its managers, while Black people hold about 11.2% of all jobs in the United States. 

Hispanic employees accounted for 27% of laborers and 11% of managers, compared with about 17% of the overall U.S. workforce.

At every level of the company in 2020, men outnumbered women in each race and ethnicity identity group, with one exception. 

In administrative, labor and sales positions, Amazon employed more Black women than Black men in 2020. It was largely the result of women holding more jobs in administrative, labor and sales positions, which pay less than those in the executive suites.

Underrepresentation is part of tech industry pattern

Amazon’s pattern of underrepresentation at the top fits with data disclosed by other companies.

According to a USA TODAY analysis published earlier this year, white employees are five times as likely as their Hispanic co-workers and seven times as likely as their Black co-workers to fill the top jobs at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Across all U.S. industries, white employees are three times as likely to be executives as Hispanic or Black employees.

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By contrast, Black and Hispanic employees disproportionately work in lower-level and lower-paying positions, the analysis found. Of the nearly 52,000 Black workers employed at Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft in 2018 and Amazon in 2016, 64% were laborers, according to the USA TODAY analysis.

That's compared with 43% of Hispanic employees and 22% of white employees.  

“People of color are rarely hired, experience the highest attrition rates, and are rarely seen at the high-ranking, decision-making positions in these companies,” Mitchell, the workplace diversity advocate, told USA TODAY. “This is particularly true for women of color, but for Black women specifically. ”

For Amazon, the latest diversity numbers follow years of transformation for the company.

From 2014 to 2020, the company’s workforce grew from 77,179 direct employees to 918,261. About 70% of that increase came from a rapid expansion of laborer jobs, primarily as the company increased its warehouse operations. 

About half a million of the new labor positions created – 75% of all the new jobs – were filled by people of color, who make up just 37% of the U.S. workforce as a whole. Though the company added 2,500 executive positions during this period, only 30% were people of color.

Women accounted for about half of the expanded ranks of Amazon laborers.