Snap’s First Diversity Report Shows Black and Latinx People Are Significantly ‘Underrepresented’

Snap, Inc. has quietly made public its first-ever diversity report and by the company’s own admission, it has fallen short of its goals. Acknowledging that “we must do more,” the company also laid out its plan to make significant improvements including a pledge to pay a “living wage” to its global workforce and increased efforts in diverse hiring.

Overall, Snap reports that women constituted 32.9% of the company’s global workforce in 2019, only a 0.9% improvement over 2018. Women made up 24% of positions at the Director level and above, an increase of 1.1%, and 30% of positions at the VP level and up, a 9.6% improvement. Snap attributed the gains to “new hires and strong retention.”

But the company said that overall gender diversity isn’t reflected as strongly on the tech side, with women making up 16.1% of tech positions overall, and only 6.7% of tech leadership positions.

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However, racial diversity lagged far behind, particularly for Black and Latinx employees. According to Snap’s report, Latinx employees made up just 6.8% of the workforce, and Black employees were just 4.1%, increases of only 0.5% and 0.6% respectively. Meanwhile, Native American were less than 1%.

The company’s mid-level leadership is “16.5% Asian, 2.6% Black/African American, 2.6% Hispanic/Latinx, 7.0% Multiracial, 0.9% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and 70.4% White,’ the report says. And senior leadership is “12.9% Asian, 3.2% Black/African American, 3.2% Hispanic/Latinx, 6.5% Multiracial and 74.2% White.”

The report said that the company’s lack of diversity was most pronounced among its tech teams, which are 91% White or Asian.

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Meanwhile, among the measures the company is taking to improve the situation, Snap intends to:

Enhance “our recruiting process to drive diverse hiring, and setting representation goals for underrepresented groups.”
Link “executive leaders’ performance outcomes to meaningful contributions to our DEI strategy and goals.”
Follow through on its “living wage pledge — minimum employee salaries of $70,000 for all roles in our headquarters, in addition to equity grants,” which are being rolled out “across the globe”

And finally, the company is planning “our first-ever audit of our Discover content mix to understand our baselines for representation and portrayal to create specific goals for inclusive content.

Read the entire report here.

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