Microsoft Divulges Diversity Numbers

Microsoft on Friday became the latest tech company to release its employee demographics and it turns out that Redmond enjoys roughly the same level of diversity—or lack thereof—in several key areas as many of its Silicon Valley peers.

The software giant reported a 70-to-30 ratio of male to female employees among its approximately 130,000 employees, roughly the same ratio reported by tech firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo earlier this year. Such gender disparities among the workforces of major technology companies were a main driver for the growing movement demanding transparency in workplace demographics that's inspired those same companies to publicly reveal their core staffing numbers.

Microsoft's numbers also make it clear that the company's ethnic diversity is just as skewed as many of the other tech titans which earlier this year revealed their own employee demographics.

For example, both Google and Yahoo reported earlier this year that their workforces were predominantly white and Asian— 91 percent at Google (61 percent white, 30 percent Asian) and 89 percent at Yahoo (50 percent white, 39 percent Asian). African-Americans and Latinos combined to make up just 5 percent of the employees at Google and just 6 percent at Yahoo.

Twitter's workforce came in at 59 percent white and 29 percent Asian, with African-Americans, Latinos, and people with other ethnicities representing just a fraction of those numbers.

Microsoft's numbers? Nearly 60 percent of its employees are white and about 30 percent are Asian. Rounding out the remaining 10 percent of staffers, 5.1 percent are listed as Hispanic/Latino, 3.5 percent are listed as African American/Black, and Multi-Racial, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander combine to make up just 2 percent of Redmond employees.

Microsoft said these numbers reflected employee demographics as of Sept. 30, 2014.

Twitter revealed its demographics in July, while Google released its own diversity data in May and Yahoo reported its numbers in June.

Like those companies, Microsoft noted that it maintains employee affinity networks for many groups within the company, including various associations for people who share nationalities, ethnicities, parenthood status, and disabilities.