Tech Companies Are Severely Underpaying Their Non-White Workers
As tech corporations began releasing a slew of disappointing diversity reports this year, most companies apologized for their numbers and pledged to do a better job at being inclusive. Those pledges didn't mention the part where the tech industry systematically underpays non-white, non-male workers.
A recent study by the American Institute for Economic Research found that having the "wrong" skin color costs tech workers thousands of dollars per year:
In the computer technology industry, on average, a Hispanic worker in this group of six occupations earns $16,353 less than a non-Hispanic worker. This is a larger differential in earnings than racial groups of color, such as blacks (whose earnings are expected to be $3,656 less than white workers), Asians (whose earnings are expected to be $8,146 less than white workers), and workers who identified "other" as their race ($6,907 less than whites).
And those figures were gathered "after controlling for education, age, region, occupation, citizenship status, and country of origin."
Bloomberg View columnist Katie Benner was particularly shocked by the low pay for Asians—a group known to be extremely well represented in the industry.
[There] seemed to be a bright spot in that otherwise grim parade of diversity numbers. Asians comprised a big chunk of the tech workforce — 23 percent at Apple, 34 percent at Google, 41 percent at Facebook and 34 percent at Twitter. Asians were the majority at Yahoo, LinkedIn and eBay, coming in at 57 percent, 60 percent and 55 percent, respectively. [...]
I offer up all this not to single out Asian employees as particularly victimized or to revisit the notion that cultural stereotypes might be keeping them out of the C-suite. I bring it up to show that a high head count in a company doesn't necessarily translate into more robust and equitable paychecks. If it did, we'd have as many Satya Nadellas as we do Jack Dorseys.
The situation has lead Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Yang to conclude tech is a "professional dead end" for Asians. Writing for CNN, Yang says there is little upward mobility for Asians and they will "hit a ceiling well before they reach management status."
Women also get their paychecks dinged by discrimination. The AIER study found that women earn $6,358 less than men and "women with at least one child earn $11,247 less than everyone else." AIER's conclusion? Tech carries a "child penalty" for women.
To contact the author of this post, please email kevin@valleywag.com.
