Apple's 2016 Diversity Report: Slight Uptick In Female Hires

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Apple released its 2016 diversity results this week, which showed a slight improvement in the percentage of women tech workers the company has hired over the past year. The report also showed how it's planning to add more minorities to its workforce in the future.

The Apple report is the latest sign that the tech industry is making incremental progress toward improving its low diversity numbers. However, more efforts are called for, as noted by the Anita Borg Institute, which plans to hold its Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in October.

"Diversity is more than any one gender, race or ethnicity. It's richly representative of all people, all backgrounds, and all perspectives. It is the entire human experience," Denise Young Smith, Apple's vice president of worldwide human resources, wrote on the company's website.

As of June, Apple reported 32% of its global workforce is made up of women, up from 31% in 2015. Within its tech department, 23% of employees are female, compared to 22% a year ago.

Although Apple has shown improvement in the percentage of women it employs in tech, it is still less than the national average of 36% for women in tech, according to 2014 figures from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Although it appears at first glance that the percentage of minorities Apple employs has increased year-over-year, it turns out the computer maker eliminated its "undeclared" category for 2016. This makes an apples-to-apples comparison difficult when trying to calculate changes in the number of minorities employed by the company.

For 2016, Apple’s tech department was 55% white, 27% Asian, 8% Black, 8% Hispanic, 2% multiracial, and 1% reported as other.

[Read more about how Microsoft and Facebook are looking to pay women equally.]

In 2015, the company's ethnic composition in its tech department was 53% white, 25% Asian, 7% Black, 8% Hispanic, 2% multiracial, 1% other, and 5% undeclared.

While it’s difficult to compare the year-to-year changes in Apple's ethnic diversity, perhaps a more telling figure is what the company is doing with its hiring in relation to its current workforce.

Of all of Apple's US hires in the past 12 months as of June, 27% were underrepresented minorities, and 37% were women.

Apple also has a collection of diversity network associations, which it notes on its website has existed for decades. These groups include Amigos@Apple, Apple Asian Association, Apple Muslim Association, and Pride@Apple.