The Staggering Statistics Around Executive Diversity Hiring

For most organizations, diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has become an essential part of their current values or future goals.

While there's been significant discussion about DE&I, specifically when it comes to representation in the workforce of certain industries, we wanted to investigate the state of diversity hiring progress and challenges for executive positions in the past few years.

Here's what we found.

According to a report by the Executive Leadership Council, the percentage of Black executives in Fortune 500 companies increased from 3.2% in 2020 to 3.8% in 2021.

A study by McKinsey & Company found that the percentage of women in senior vice president roles increased from 23% in 2015 to 28% in 2020.

However, the same McKinsey & Company study also found that progress towards racial and ethnic diversity at the executive level has been slow, with only a 1 percentage point increase in representation for Black, Hispanic, and Native American individuals over the same time period.

While gradual advances have been made for certain groups, there's still major progress that needs to be made across the board.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that hiring bias against women and minorities persists in executive hiring. The study found that resumes with white-sounding names were 36% more likely to receive a callback than resumes with African American-sounding names, and 24% more likely than resumes with Hispanic-sounding names.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, only 6.5% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women, and only 3.3% are Black, Hispanic, or Native American.

These statistics show that while there has been some progress in diversity hiring at the executive level, there is still much work to be done to ensure that companies are truly representative of the diverse populations they serve.