Speaker 1: More brands and businesses are becoming vocal in the movement
Speaker 1: for racial justice and equity. Some are taking it a
Speaker 1: step further, pledging donations and changes in their own practices
Speaker 1: to address workforce and equity. Adidas, which also owns Reebok,
Speaker 1: is pledging to increase the number of black and Latino
Speaker 1: employees it hires by the end of next year.
Speaker 2: Bank of America is pledging to address racial and economic
Speaker 2: inequalities by partnering with community colleges and universities.
Speaker 3: Microsoft CEO Satiandadella has now outlined some plans to double
Speaker 3: the number of black managers and senior leaders in the
Speaker 3: US of that company over the next five years.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty, after the murder of George Floyd in
Speaker 4: Minneapolis led to protests across America, many US corporations pledged
Speaker 4: to address racial imbalances in their workplaces. They promised to
Speaker 4: hire and to promote more black people and others from
Speaker 4: underrepresented groups. Now three years later, we're able to see
Speaker 4: some of the early results. Bloomberg's Jeff green and Rebecca
Speaker 4: Greenfield are here to talk about a new analysis by
Speaker 4: a big team here in our newsroom. It shows for
Speaker 4: the first time. How some of the most prominent US
Speaker 4: companies did in making good on those promises. Where they've
Speaker 4: made gains.
Speaker 5: Across eighty eight companies, ninety four percent of those net
Speaker 5: new people were people of color.
Speaker 3: It's the kind of number when you see it, you
Speaker 3: go back and you check all your data because you
Speaker 3: figure you must have done something wrong. And we've done
Speaker 3: that again and again, and it's correct.
Speaker 4: And where they still fall short.
Speaker 5: More than a quarter of companies and our data set
Speaker 5: had fewer black executives and twenty twenty one than twenty twenties.
Speaker 3: And the question we're talking about right now is did
Speaker 3: it continue.
Speaker 4: I'm west Ksova today on the big take workplace inequality
Speaker 4: by the numbers. Jeff, you've been following these numbers for
Speaker 4: three years, now, what got you started on this project?
Speaker 3: We're trying to find a way to measure diversity, and
Speaker 3: as Becca knows, it's really frustrating the lack of data
Speaker 3: that's available that you can compare apples to apples. It
Speaker 3: just doesn't exist except in this one database, which happens
Speaker 3: to be secret and protected by the Supreme Court, so
Speaker 3: you can't force companies to show it to you.
Speaker 4: And what is this database?
Speaker 3: Every year, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires companies
Speaker 3: with more than one hundred workers to report the race
Speaker 3: and gender for nine positions executive down to like service worker.
Speaker 3: So basically every role, by every way you could think
Speaker 3: of slicing and dicing it in the company. That information
Speaker 3: is totally private unless the company volunteers to disclose it.
Speaker 4: What does the government do with this information?
Speaker 3: They aggregate it. They make a huge database of the
Speaker 3: whole country, so you can track what's happening by like
Speaker 3: city and region, non mislead and they also can specifically
Speaker 3: use it to find really bad violators of like if
Speaker 3: if your numbers are really wacky, they're going to come
Speaker 3: and they're going to ask questions.
Speaker 4: So when you went off trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 4: how diverse is the American workforce at these big companies,
Speaker 4: what did you have to do?
Speaker 3: Well, we were aware of the data because Facebook and Google,
Speaker 3: the tech companies, were under scrutiny.
Speaker 6: Black professionals make up just five percent of the tech
Speaker 6: workforce and three percent of executive positions. From twenty fourteen
Speaker 6: to twenty twenty, black representation increased by only one percentage point.
Speaker 3: And the banks were under pressure from the New York
Speaker 3: City Controller to show they were hiring more fairly, especially
Speaker 3: for women, and so they were convinced to release this
Speaker 3: data to get these people off their back. So we
Speaker 3: knew they existed. When we started this project, there were
Speaker 3: about a dozen companies that had in some way released
Speaker 3: this data to the public, so we knew it was possible.
Speaker 4: And Jeff, what made you want to try to get
Speaker 4: this information for his many companies as you could?
Speaker 3: It was really the frustration of trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what was really happening, because every company would report this
Speaker 3: data in a different way, based on what made them
Speaker 3: look good or how they felt comfortable. Some would give
Speaker 3: just people of color, some would break it out by
Speaker 3: different races, some would put all underrepresented groups together. And
Speaker 3: it made it next to impossible to put two companies
Speaker 3: next to each other and see how they're doing. So
Speaker 3: this was the only way I could think of, you know,
Speaker 3: apples to apples comparison, And there's a a federal law
Speaker 3: that requires you to do this, and it says exactly
Speaker 3: how to do it, and each company has to do
Speaker 3: it the same way. So it is the only set
Speaker 3: of data that I'm aware of at a federal level
Speaker 3: that we could go to. So I just I just
Speaker 3: kept making that case, and the companies just kept telling
Speaker 3: me I was nuts and it's unreasonable.
Speaker 5: Reporters like Jeff and I had been aware of this
Speaker 5: data for a little while because companies were under pressure
Speaker 5: to do better specifically with gender, specifically tech companies and banks.
Speaker 5: But then there was a turning point, which was the
Speaker 5: summer of twenty twenty when George Flood was murdered and
Speaker 5: there were huge protests and a lot of big companies
Speaker 5: basically said we are going to do better, and we're
Speaker 5: going to hire and promote more black people specifically, but
Speaker 5: then broadly more people of color in general. We know
Speaker 5: that most workplaces are lopsided, that at the top are
Speaker 5: mostly white men, and disproportionately so like, of course, you know,
Speaker 5: white people are our larger share of the population, but
Speaker 5: they still hold even more power and have more money
Speaker 5: than other groups within the country. So that was when
Speaker 5: we decided to say, okay, we want to look at this,
Speaker 5: and that's when we systematically decided to ask the S
Speaker 5: and P one hundred, will you give us these EO
Speaker 5: one forms.
Speaker 3: I would say that the murder of George Floyd definitely
Speaker 3: broke this open as like a plausible request. Companies were
Speaker 3: not so much suddenly happy to comply, but they were
Speaker 3: reluctant to be on a list of companies that didn't comply.
Speaker 3: Being singled out is not cooperating in racial equity was
Speaker 3: a bad look.
Speaker 4: So you went to all these companies, you asked for
Speaker 4: the data. You went back and forth, and then you
Speaker 4: got the numbers. Which companies gave you data of the
Speaker 4: S and P one hundred, there were one hundred largest companies.
Speaker 3: The first time we did it, it was twenty five.
Speaker 3: The next time we did it was thirty seven, the
Speaker 3: time after that it was somewhere in the seventies, and
Speaker 3: now it's ninety six. Every time we went there were
Speaker 3: more companies who were willing to comply, and we weren't
Speaker 3: the only ones asking, but it became a very common question,
Speaker 3: if you're serious, where's your EEO one?
Speaker 5: And at first companies were trying to give us numbers
Speaker 5: in different forms, you know, to make themselves look a
Speaker 5: little better, or you know, they thought it was unfair
Speaker 5: because the forum is very specific and doesn't work perfectly
Speaker 5: for every company. Not every company has crafts workers, for example.
Speaker 5: But over time, you know, we held farm and said, no,
Speaker 5: we need the EEO one forum. That's the only way
Speaker 5: to compare companies to each other. And now it's much
Speaker 5: quicker to get that form. They're pretty familiar with. That's
Speaker 5: what we want, that's what matters. Just give it to us.
Speaker 4: And so what years do these data cover.
Speaker 3: It's twenty twenty to twenty twenty one. Unfortunately, because of
Speaker 3: COVID everything was slowed down. They haven't even submitted their
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two data, so we don't know what that
Speaker 3: looks like. They don't have to have that turned in
Speaker 3: until December. So this is the most current data available
Speaker 3: for these large companies.
Speaker 4: And so essentially you have the numbers for right after
Speaker 4: a lot of these companies made this big pledge, right
Speaker 4: at the time when there was the most scrutiny on them.
Speaker 4: And why don't we start talking about the numbers themselves?
Speaker 4: What did you find in all this trove of data?
Speaker 5: Jeff and some other really amazing reporters at Bloomberg decided
Speaker 5: to look at where did things change on the margins,
Speaker 5: because that's really where you're going to see changes Basically,
Speaker 5: all companies can really do is hire people, promote people,
Speaker 5: people retire, and people are laid off. So they looked
Speaker 5: at these net worker changes. So that's gains and losses
Speaker 5: across eighty eight companies. Ninety four percent of those net
Speaker 5: new people were people of color, which is really astounding,
Speaker 5: Like that is a big change.
Speaker 4: So Jeff, let's break that down a little bit. When
Speaker 4: you say ninety four percent of net new employees, what
Speaker 4: does that mean.
Speaker 3: So there's about nine million employees working at these companies.
Speaker 3: They added about three hundred thousand new workers over the
Speaker 3: time period we studied, and of those only about twenty
Speaker 3: thousand were white. It's the kind of number when you
Speaker 3: see it, you go back and you check all your
Speaker 3: data because you figure you must have done something wrong.
Speaker 3: And we've done that again and again and it's correct.
Speaker 5: And I also want to say that we break it
Speaker 5: out by different racial and ethnic groups, Asian, Hispanic, and black.
Speaker 5: You know, they grew more than their share of the population.
Speaker 5: So it's a disproportionate gain, is what we call that.
Speaker 4: And so that top line numberley's something that these companies
Speaker 4: would want to boast about. But then you dug more
Speaker 4: deeply into the data and started to divide it up,
Speaker 4: and there the picture becomes a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 4: Can you describe what that looks like, Jeff.
Speaker 3: What we found was that in the power positions like
Speaker 3: executives and managers and professionals, there were fewer gains for
Speaker 3: the underrepresented workers than in the broader sort of less skilled,
Speaker 3: lower paying jobs. But still across the board they did better.
Speaker 3: It's just as you would expect. It seems to be
Speaker 3: harder for the companies to put people of color into
Speaker 3: the power jobs than it is for them to get
Speaker 3: them in the door, but at least across the board
Speaker 3: they seem to show gains.
Speaker 5: Also when you dig into specific companies. Of course, not
Speaker 5: every company did everything across the board, but there were
Speaker 5: some really big companies that did do interesting and notable things.
Speaker 5: So one company that we single out is Amazon, which
Speaker 5: is a big company with a lot of employees. It
Speaker 5: made a lot of hires in twenty twenty one. Of course,
Speaker 5: a lot of the gains among black and Hispanic workers. Specifically,
Speaker 5: we're at the lowest level, so you know that's where
Speaker 5: house jobs. But when you dig deeper, they also hired
Speaker 5: a lot of people at the higher levels too. Another
Speaker 5: company that stood out to us was Nike, and Nike's
Speaker 5: much smaller company, but tends to have pretty high paying
Speaker 5: them all paying jobs and pretty much for every single
Speaker 5: racial and ethnic group, especially at the high paying level.
Speaker 5: So that's executive manager, professional. Every race and ethnicity saw
Speaker 5: some gains. So those are interesting.
Speaker 4: Trends, Jeff, you also talked about some other companies. What
Speaker 4: are some of the ones where it stood out to
Speaker 4: you in the numbers.
Speaker 3: CBS was interesting. They brought in a lot more people
Speaker 3: for some of the similar reasons. I mean, this is COVID,
Speaker 3: so you're seeing a lot of a COVID effect here.
Speaker 3: But even interesting, home depot and lows shrink during this
Speaker 3: time period, but their diversity improved. This is a big
Speaker 3: question that we have is what happens when you lay
Speaker 3: people off? Does diversity so in companies like that prove
Speaker 3: the point. We could see it right there in the data.
Speaker 3: They cut workers, but somehow they managed to maintain their
Speaker 3: diversity and improve it slightly, which is a really relevant
Speaker 3: question right now.
Speaker 4: And does that suggest that even though they knew they
Speaker 4: needed to cut, they were very specifically trying to maintain
Speaker 4: diversity even though they had to shrink their overall numbers.
Speaker 3: That is the premise. We've talked to some people not
Speaker 3: in the s and p. One hundred about how they shrank,
Speaker 3: and everyone that we talked to said, we've already recognized
Speaker 3: that last in, first out. The idea that you fire
Speaker 3: the newest workers in a downturn is the way to go.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't work. So that gets rid of all
Speaker 3: your diversity. Because your newest workers tend to be your
Speaker 3: most diverse. It does appear that that's what was happening.
Speaker 3: I mean, the problem is we don't know because no
Speaker 3: one will talk to us about what their numbers actually say.
Speaker 4: After the break why some companies are hesitant to point
Speaker 4: out the progress they've made. Zecha, We've been talking about
Speaker 4: some of the success stories, but you also found that
Speaker 4: some companies moved in the other direction.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I mean progress is uneven when you dig
Speaker 5: into specific companies, not everyone is going to look the same.
Speaker 5: More than a quarter of companies and our data set
Speaker 5: had fewer black executives and twenty twenty one than twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: So that's the opposite of what you want to see.
Speaker 5: And there were just a smattering of companies that moved
Speaker 5: in the opposite direction, so they lost the share of
Speaker 5: people from underrepresented groups.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the key thing here is, even where we
Speaker 3: saw a shared decline, we're talking points of percentage points,
Speaker 3: we really didn't see anybody who went like in a
Speaker 3: serious opposite direction. What this mostly does is show like
Speaker 3: areas where companies are deficient, like not having any black executives. Directionally,
Speaker 3: the momentum was clearly in the favor of people of
Speaker 3: color in this year.
Speaker 4: And bego, what are the companies that didn't increase the
Speaker 4: number of underrepresented employees say about.
Speaker 5: That outside Generally, companies that had what you might consider
Speaker 5: good or bad or you know whatever their EO one
Speaker 5: forum looked like didn't really want to talk specifics with us.
Speaker 5: They didn't want to get into how they did it.
Speaker 5: A lot of companies sent we are coming into diversity language,
Speaker 5: or they would, you know, send like here, you know,
Speaker 5: here's what we've said in the past about it, but
Speaker 5: really known was going to dig in deep with us
Speaker 5: on what they did, which really surprised us. Actually, you'd
Speaker 5: think that, you know, especially the ones who made big gains,
Speaker 5: would want to get into it and say here's how
Speaker 5: we did it, but they didn't want to. One reason
Speaker 5: we think that is is because it very quickly has
Speaker 5: become very unpopular to talk about diversity in the current
Speaker 5: cultural conversation.
Speaker 3: So corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are coming under
Speaker 3: fire now as conservative groups are pushing against the workplace policies.
Speaker 2: Legal threats against companies promoting these initiatives have only ramped
Speaker 2: up since the Supreme Court ruling that determined if from
Speaker 2: action was unconstitutional.
Speaker 5: Things have really changed since twenty twenty. You know, there
Speaker 5: was at that time a big push people thought it
Speaker 5: was important. Now it's not that way. There's a big
Speaker 5: anti ESG pushbacks that ESG as companies deciding that they
Speaker 5: care about social and environmental issues in the way they
Speaker 5: run their companies. A lot of people are saying that's
Speaker 5: not important, corporate anti woke backlash. Basically a lot of
Speaker 5: people saying, why are we focusing on these things? Companies
Speaker 5: should only be thinking about their bottom line. US Supreme
Speaker 5: Court reversed affirmative action and education, which some people think
Speaker 5: could be applied to companies. They're very worried about legal
Speaker 5: risk for that, so they have more reasons not to
Speaker 5: talk about it now than they do too talk about it.
Speaker 3: I think if this data came out in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: they'd be dancing in the streets and companies would be
Speaker 3: lining up to talk to us. But in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three it could be a lawsuit. So they're being more cautious.
Speaker 3: They're being advised by their lawyers to just be careful
Speaker 3: what you say and how you portray it, and that
Speaker 3: really is kind of unfortunate, considering this is pretty much
Speaker 3: shows what they can do when they're pressed.
Speaker 4: And what is it that they're afraid of being sued for.
Speaker 3: I mean the fact that a disproportionate number of the
Speaker 3: people they hired were people of color. The groups that
Speaker 3: are suing over this would say, hey, this shows very
Speaker 3: clear bias in your hiring and therefore we should be
Speaker 3: able to sue you on behalf of white workers who
Speaker 3: didn't get their share of the jobs that were available.
Speaker 5: I also think we need to clarify that when they're
Speaker 5: the worker losses were, yes, disproportionately white people, but we
Speaker 5: don't know what that is. That can be yes, layoffs,
Speaker 5: it can be firings, it can be retirements. The demographics
Speaker 5: of the US are shifting that many more people coming
Speaker 5: into the workforce aren't white. So this is going to
Speaker 5: happen naturally, but it's not necessarily discriminatory. There are lots
Speaker 5: of reasons why the losses might look one way or another.
Speaker 5: Or you know, a company closing down a warehouse in
Speaker 5: a disproportionately white part of the country for what you know,
Speaker 5: maybe the population is shrinking and they don't want a
Speaker 5: warehouse there and opening it up in a more diverse
Speaker 5: part of the country. So there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 5: these changes are happening. I think we do need to
Speaker 5: make that clear. It's not necessarily straight up discrimination.
Speaker 3: That's the really important point, because the workforce at the
Speaker 3: moment is kind of split, where white workers are older
Speaker 3: and retiring and the black and Hispanic workers are the
Speaker 3: youngest workers and entering the workforce. So if you want
Speaker 3: to leave the workforce and you're white, you can probably
Speaker 3: afford it. But for people of color, they're just getting
Speaker 3: started and thus less able to leave the workforce. When
Speaker 3: there were bios and such as well, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of dynamics in play that could explain this. It's
Speaker 3: just we wish the companies would give us some sense
Speaker 3: of what they think is causing.
Speaker 4: It beca One of the things you write is that
Speaker 4: for a lot of years, companies said they have a
Speaker 4: hard time finding qualified minority applicants because there isn't a pipeline.
Speaker 4: And yet this shows suddenly that pipeline appears when they
Speaker 4: have to do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, pipeline is something that people like me
Speaker 5: and Jeff have been in this world for a long time.
Speaker 5: Was a big buzzword.
Speaker 4: And what exactly is a pipeline? Because you hear that
Speaker 4: all the time, But what do they mean by that?
Speaker 5: Well, we don't have enough people with X degree that
Speaker 5: will lead them to this hire and paying job, whether
Speaker 5: that's you know, a tech job or management position or
Speaker 5: CEO position. We just don't have the people with the
Speaker 5: skills and the talent we need to fill the job.
Speaker 5: So it's not our fault. Actually, it's the structural problem,
Speaker 5: which we you know, can do things to change, but
Speaker 5: it's so long term you'll never see it. And I
Speaker 5: think a lot of people have said that's not true. One,
Speaker 5: there's more creative ways to hire and train people. There's
Speaker 5: been a push away from requiring college degrees for every
Speaker 5: single job. That might not need them. But also there
Speaker 5: are reasons that people along the way of their career leave.
Speaker 5: And I reported on gender in the workplace for a
Speaker 5: very long time and that was a big one for
Speaker 5: women specifically, there were a lot of them in entry
Speaker 5: level jobs. Why are they not climbing up this ladder
Speaker 5: to mix our metaphors, you know, they're discriminated against. The
Speaker 5: workplace isn't very open and welcoming to them. They have
Speaker 5: children and find it very difficult to stay in. So
Speaker 5: you know, that's just the gender component, but there are
Speaker 5: similar reasons for people who are underrepresented. They don't feel welcome,
Speaker 5: it's very difficult, or you know, there's certain in group
Speaker 5: skills that lead to your success. So I think it's
Speaker 5: a much more complicated picture, and it shows when you
Speaker 5: kind of get rid of some of these excuses. You
Speaker 5: can not only build out your pipeline, as Jeff said,
Speaker 5: but yet it's the higher paying levels. Do you have
Speaker 5: more people in these jobs?
Speaker 3: Also in this timeframe, suddenly work from home was possible,
Speaker 3: and if you can hire people wherever they are, you
Speaker 3: can hire from a much more diverse, you know, pipeline
Speaker 3: of people. Then you can hire when they have to
Speaker 3: live in the city where you're based. In the middle
Speaker 3: of America might not have a diverse workforce, but if
Speaker 3: they can suddenly hire from Georgia and Texas, it works great.
Speaker 4: When we come back, Will companies keep up their diversity efforts, Jeff,
Speaker 4: As you said, these numbers stop at twenty twenty one,
Speaker 4: and a lot has happened since then. I guess one
Speaker 4: of the big question marks is has this flurry of
Speaker 4: new hiring continued or was it a one time thing
Speaker 4: and it's tapered off and people are just going back
Speaker 4: to their old habits.
Speaker 3: We don't know for sure, but there are reasons to
Speaker 3: be optimistic that maybe some of this will continue because
Speaker 3: people are talking less publicly about diversity topics, but when
Speaker 3: we dig down, it does appear they're still sending that
Speaker 3: message to potential employees. Because companies are kind of stuck.
Speaker 3: They know it's dangerous to sort of raise their hand
Speaker 3: and call attention to themselves. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: what Becka said, the demographics of the country are shifting,
Speaker 3: and you've got to hire from the people who exist.
Speaker 3: You can't be thinking about the workers of the past.
Speaker 3: So to some degree, this is built in as a
Speaker 3: requirement for these companies to be competitive.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to tell what has happened since then.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, twenty twenty one, big year of
Speaker 5: hiring economy very different now. A lot of the companies
Speaker 5: in our set have done layoffs, and we would love
Speaker 5: to know what those look like. There have been big
Speaker 5: cultural shifts. We don't know if those have, you know,
Speaker 5: seeped down internally into hiring managers and companies. I think,
Speaker 5: like Jeff said and our reporting, like companies and the
Speaker 5: people hiring and the people work at them do think
Speaker 5: it's important. They think it's good for business to have
Speaker 5: different kinds of people reach different customers, not make missteps
Speaker 5: where you might get called out in the broader world.
Speaker 5: We don't know if that cultural backlash has resulted in
Speaker 5: different hiring changes, but it certainly could have. The trend
Speaker 5: is going to just demographically happen in some way, shape
Speaker 5: or form. We know that. But what's interesting to us
Speaker 5: is if the push will continue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jeff, you've been working on this data for a
Speaker 4: number of years. You're waiting for new data to come.
Speaker 4: Where does the story go from here? What's your next step?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean the question we're talking about right now,
Speaker 3: is did it continue. We'll get a really good sense
Speaker 3: of at some time, maybe mid next year, like how
Speaker 3: big of a deal was it when when people started
Speaker 3: to cut back, did they maintain these gains? An important
Speaker 3: thing to keep in mind is these are big shares
Speaker 3: of networkers, but they are very small incremental changes to
Speaker 3: these nine million people. I mean, we're talking two percentage points.
Speaker 3: We're not talking, you know, fifty percentage points. So there's
Speaker 3: something for everyone here. If you gained only two percentage
Speaker 3: points across all these people, that's like, not very much happened.
Speaker 3: But if ninety four percent of the people who did
Speaker 3: hire are people of color, that's awesome. It's a very
Speaker 3: nuanced picture.
Speaker 5: The big picture is that these companies still a glock side.
Speaker 5: It's very hard to make these changes. And like Jeff said,
Speaker 5: in the overall picture of at a two percentage shift,
Speaker 5: which sounds small, but then a lot's happening at the margins.
Speaker 3: Okay, So at the lower level jobs, there's already a
Speaker 3: majority of people of color at these companies. So the
Speaker 3: bases there, that pipeline we're talking about exists inside these
Speaker 3: companies already. It's just now like Amazon did, can you
Speaker 3: move them up?
Speaker 4: So I guess that's the big question to look for
Speaker 4: in the future is did all these people who they
Speaker 4: hired then start to occupy the middle ranks and ultimately
Speaker 4: the upper ranks of a company, which is traditionally how
Speaker 4: people rise exactly.
Speaker 3: It is like really important to keep the focus on
Speaker 3: the fact that this is like this really great comprehensive
Speaker 3: set of data that was not available three years ago.
Speaker 3: And thanks to all the pressure that we're put on
Speaker 3: these companies, even if it's abating, the precedent is there
Speaker 3: and it's going to be difficult potentially for them to
Speaker 3: stop releasing this data. So we're going to have this
Speaker 3: ability to watch this now that we've never had in
Speaker 3: the history of corporate America, to see like, how is
Speaker 3: this going forward and what is this going to look like?
Speaker 3: And I mean, if anything, that's like the big win here.
Speaker 3: I mean, even if this is just a snapshot, we
Speaker 3: now have an ability to kind of watch this that
Speaker 3: we didn't have three years ago.
Speaker 4: You mentioned that these companies are feeling political pressure. Have
Speaker 4: you had any indication that some of them are going
Speaker 4: to stop giving you this data?
Speaker 3: Not so far, And that's what we're waiting to see
Speaker 3: in terms of twenty twenty two. Did some of these
Speaker 3: reports not show up? But the trend has been in
Speaker 3: the other direction obviously, so now we'll wait and see.
Speaker 3: That is like one of the big questions you have
Speaker 3: to be answered is will there be eighty eight? Will
Speaker 3: there be ninety six? Will there be seventy five? We
Speaker 3: will find out next year sometime beca.
Speaker 4: We've been talking about employees, but what about corporate boards.
Speaker 4: There's been a lot of effort in recent years to
Speaker 4: try to increase diversity on boards.
Speaker 5: Broadly, boards are much easier to make more diverse than
Speaker 5: an entire huge workforce. First of all, you can just
Speaker 5: add people to boards, which is what a lot of
Speaker 5: companies have done, and they've made huge gains and gender
Speaker 5: and race and ethnicity.
Speaker 3: The same exact trend was definitely seen in the boardroom
Speaker 3: black directors, and many companies didn't have a single black
Speaker 3: director there. Last year. We're about eleven percent from which
Speaker 3: is almost double where they started, which means black directors
Speaker 3: on boards in the S and P five hundred are
Speaker 3: now almost at parody with the population, which is astounding.
Speaker 3: In two years, they doubled this is a proxy for
Speaker 3: how much pressure these companies felt, and in the most
Speaker 3: visible place where you can see them, the boardroom, they
Speaker 3: really responded. So that's an indication that what we were
Speaker 3: seeing was specifically in reaction to the environment that they
Speaker 3: lived in at that time.
Speaker 4: Jeff Becca, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks Wes, it's been really great to get to talk
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
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