Diversity report: Apple says has closed salary gaps

Apple has reported improvements in gender and ethnic diversity in June as the US technology company stayed ahead of fellow Silicon Valley powerhouses Google and Facebook Inc in hiring minorities.

Apple also said in its annual diversity and inclusion report that it had closed pay gaps over the last year by analyzing salaries, bonuses and annual stock grants. It had also opened up its annual stock grants program to retail employees for the first time.

As of June, Apple’s overall US workforce was 56% white (up 2% from a year ago), 19% Asian (down 1%) 12% Hispanic (up 1%), and 9% black (up 1%).

Apple’s workforce includes a pool of retail employees that Google and Facebook do not have. In Apple stores, blacks and Hispanics respectively comprised 12% and 17% of general employees, and 5% and 10% of the leadership.

At Alphabet Inc’s Google unit, blacks and Hispanics respectively made up 2% and 3% of the overall workforce and 1% and 3% of its tech employees, little changed from last year.

At Facebook, blacks and Hispanics were respectively 2% and 4% of the workforce and 1% and 3% of tech employees.

Apple’s global workforce was 32% women, up 1% from the end of June 2015. Women held 23% of technical positions, up 1% from a year ago, and 28% of leadership positions, unchanged from June last year.

Reverend Jesse Jackson, who confronted Apple chief executive Tim Cook in 2014 about the company’s lack of diversity and unfair compensation, applauded its efforts to connect with engineers of color through partnerships with historically black colleges and universities and scholarship organizations.

“They are clearly setting the pace, making measurable progress for three consecutive years. They’ve acted with intention, not just aspiration,” Jackson said in a statement.

Amazon Inc, which employs a large number of workers at distribution centers, reported late last year that its ethnic diversity exceeded the US average, with a global workforce that was 21% black, 13% Hispanic, 11% Asian and 5% other ethnicities.

In management positions at Amazon, however, representation dropped to 4% for blacks and Hispanics, 3 percent for other races, and climbed to 20% for Asians.