Diversity Workers Being Phased Out Amid Corporate Job Cuts
“a pair of recent reports indicate, DEI professionals are losing their jobs, as layoffs across the economy have gained momentum”
Diversity staffers are not limited to higher education. Following the death of George Floyd, corporate America went on a DEI hiring binge.
Now that the economy is less than great, many diversity workers are being let go. It seems the diversity boom is coming to an end.
NBC News reports:
Hamstrung by ‘golden handcuffs’: Diversity roles disappear 3 years after George Floyd’s murder inspired them
Diversity, equity and inclusion leaders, who were hired in waves to help companies achieve an ethnically balanced workforce after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, are being phased out, surveys indicate, leaving experts in the field concerned that corporations’ talk of affecting change was just empty words.
DEI roles increased by 55% following demands for broader racial equity and justice after Floyd’s murder, the Society for Human Resource Management reported in 2020. But instead of creating fair opportunities and a comfortable work culture for Black employees, a pair of recent reports indicate, DEI professionals are losing their jobs, as layoffs across the economy have gained momentum.
The attrition rate for DEI roles was 33% at the end of 2022, compared to 21% for non-DEI roles. Amazon, Applebees and Twitter lead the way with DEI layoffs since July 2022, according to Revelio Labs, a New York-based company that uses data to analyze workforce dynamics and trends.
Another survey showed that Black employees represent only 3.8% of chief diversity officers overall, with white people making up 76.1% of the roles. Those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity make up 7.8% and those of Asian ethnicity make up 7.7%…
DEI professional Nika White, author of the book, “Inclusion Uncomplicated,” said the studies also reveal “the harsh reality” of many companies’ commitments to diversity. “This is very disheartening, especially after so many of us were hopeful after George Floyd’s murder that organization leaders would be sensitized and committed to equity and inclusion.”
This trend has been building for some time now.
The Washington Times reported last week:
Diversity, equity and inclusion jobs on the chopping block in recent corporate layoffs
Diversity, equity and inclusion workers across corporate America have found their positions on the chopping block in recent rounds of layoffs.
At more than 600 companies that had laid off workers, the year-over-year attrition rate for DEI professionals has been higher than for other workers.
Between December 2021 and December 2022, DEI workers had a 33% attrition rate, compared to 21% for non-DEI workers, according to data from workforce analytics company Revelio Labs.
In the six months since July 2022, multiple companies have had sizable numbers of DEI employees with seniority leaving; 16 at Amazon, seven at Twitter, five at Nike, and four at Comcast, among other corporations.
The small size of many diversity teams — the median being three — means that some companies have shuttered their entire diversity departments. Over 300 DEI professionals left their company in the measured time span, Revelio Labs indicated.
Diversity staffers seem like a good idea in a Trump-style economy when business is booming. That’s when a company can afford it. In a Biden-style economy, when you’re worried about the future? Not so much.
The other problem with diversity staffers is that they don’t build, market, or sell anything. What they do create is problems that then must be solved by the company. Not enough people of color at the company? Not enough LGBTQ people at the company? These are the issues that these workers are paid to notice and report.
You don’t need these problems if you’re a boss worried about meeting profit projections, payroll or rent.
Here’s a recent report from the FOX Business Network:
Featured image via YouTube.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
If you want to know what’s really important wait until things get tight. I have worked for too many over-managed companies that failed when things got tight.
The difference between corporations and nonprofits, education and government is that profitability drives housecleaning. These other entities need Twitter-Elon Musk like housecleaning. Incompetent Affirmative hires of all races and groups must be kicked to the curb, and then find work appropriate for their limited capabilities.
I logged in just to give you a THUMB Up and to second your assessment! BUT, just where will those with such LIMITED CAPABILITIES find employment?? From my experience with AA hires and promoted people I see NOTHING in their future as far as meaningful work! When the ONLY qualification you have is a skin tone or sex opening or BOTH, that severely limits your possibilities! And THAT is the worst part of what AA does! These people have been “schooled” on grievance and appeasement rather than on REAL, VALUABLE skills! Every place I have been employed had plenty of people who COMPLAINED, but not as their JOB!!
I see a future class of UNEMPLOYABLE “EDUCATED” idiots!
Great, just what I needed — more unskilled homeless on my sidewalk.
Moms should be filling in their basements with cement.
Downturns clean up a lot of nonsense.
But they don’t clean up all the people and attitudes that lead to this to begin with.
Legalized racism is still racism and this doesn’t change the fight.
Amazing how many younger managers look in shock when you explain actual EEOC law and note that they can’t score a candidate in a scoring sheet as preferred because they are a non-binary purple dwarf.
That is probably the best comment I’m gonna see all day, thank you so very much for that. And at the same time, so much truth was just spoken….
Speaking of George Floyd, why hasn’t the woke biotech sector stepped up to the plate to perpetuate him? Surely if they can bring back the wooly mammoth they can clone millions of shiftless, drug-addled, menacing Floyds for us to worship. We can burn cops alive at Floyd altars in every city and town to propitiate him.
You need to visit more cities.
Bean counters come in and see that DEI hires are nothing but a black hole, contributing literally nothing but negative returns to the bottom line, and out they go. Shocker!
I was a Controller for a manufacturing plant and despised the term “bean counter”! I explained to my Regional VP when he said it that I don’t “count” beans, I do valuable analysis of expenditures and adherence to Corporate Policy to maximize profits and maintain a “clean” facility! He said he’d never heard it explained like that and apologized! Now there are a lot of people who do nothing to ADD to the value of a company other than “count beans”, but when you state they identify these “black holes”, that’s not “counting beans”, that’s providing actionable advice that most times leads to a cost savings to a company and also alleviates many political and social issues!
But what if you worked in a bean factory?
Good. Their only purpose is to destroy an otherwise good organization. Contrary to modern, secular faith, diversity isn’t necessarily a strength.
Diversity is strength like war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is (also) strength.
They slipped it in on us because that one wasn’t in the book and we weren’t paying attention.
(If you pay attention to the racist commutative math, diversity is therefore ignorance. QED.)
Diversity is a destroyer of cultures, societies and entire countries.
This is why universities won’t get rid of their DEI staffs — there’s no downturn, thus no revenue threat, and thus no incentive. As Dr. Ray Stantz said in Ghostbusters: “Personally, I liked the University. They gave us money and facilities, we didn’t have to produce anything! You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.”
Classic.
So the new rent seekers are the first to go? I know I’m shocked.
Diversity [dogma], color judgment, class-based bigotry, was always a marginally viable means to securing leverage.
“DEI Professional”. Ha. Another famous contradictory phrase in the tradition of “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp”.
My first of 2 comments: Search on Olympia School District Budget shortfall.
They took all the COVID money and spent it on DIE and LGBTQT counselors. They rammed sexual material into the heads of ALL k-12. Parents pulled kids in droves. Along with the declining birth rate in Wa because 1) millennials aren’t having babies and 2) families are leaving Wa-this has caused enrollment to plummet. Funding is based on enrollment.
As it turns out even our rich liberal friends think it’s a poor quality of ed and have moved their kids to private school. So those federally funded counselors will be laid off along with tons of other staff. They will probably raise taxes to keep them on, but GOOD!!!! These stupid voters deserve everything they get from this school district and this state government.
The diversity damage will be hard to undo in large corporations.
I have not and will not disclose where I work but it’s F500 for sure.
People have been thrust into positions they are not capable of performing in. They have been placed there because of their gender and skin color. These are senior leadership positions. No one will fire them because of their skin color. We call them the untouchables.
On a good day they do nothing but attend diversity conferences and make diversity power points or collect cabals of doe eyed young woman to be diversity “allies.” On a bad day, which is most where I work, they are needed to make decisions with consequences. I can see tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars being lost because this. In other circumstances I can see the potential for losses in the billions because of mismanagement and MIA.
Not to be too rough on the darker skinned management. The lighter skinned management that put them there because of skin color was none too smart to start with.
As some else in this situation, I can confirm everything you said is true. Maybe less ironically, a lot of the middle management positions are also useless – but now they’ve put these unqualified untouchables in these roles and are doubly screwed, haha.
Guess those Diversity Degrees ain’t worth so much when a public company actually has to make money to avoid lawsuits. BTW Those Diversity Degrees you thought were suddenly going to be made free because Brandon are about to get shot down in SCOTUS
Good riddance!
One thing that people need to learn from this is the % of minorities affected! Sure they are lesser than the others, but that’s WHY they are referred to as MINORITIES! Some of the most ignorant, useless ee’s I’ve ever seen were of the MAJORITY race but LEFTIST IDEOLOGY! It’s good to remove a cancer from your body or even just a hemorrhoid!!!
“…On the flip side, we’re told the white race is a racist race. White people who try not to be racist, and think they’ve succeeded, are the most racist of all for failing to recognize that they’ve failed.
White people are required to confess that they’re racist even as they try not to be, and further confess that they always will be no matter how hard they try. The intelligentsia now make a big show of such confessions because it makes them feel virtuous and, a bit weirdly, like victims themselves.
Their cheap talk goes something like, “I’m so sorry I’ve acted badly. It’s because my bad race has given me the racism disease. If only I hadn’t been born white.”
In short, in the name of anti-racism, we’ve legitimized racism by declaring that white people are racist because of their race. Black lives matter, but the racist lives of these racist white people don’t, and it’s racist to suggest that they do.
Maybe they should be enslaved. Until then, they should grovel…” Taken from ““In the name of anti-racism, we’ve declared white people racist on the basis of their race.”
September 13, 2020; by Glenn Beacon
https://theaspenbeat.com/2020/09/13/in-the-name-of-anti-racism-weve-declared-white-people-racist-on-the-basis-of-their-race/
Stated DEI (DIE?) purpose: “creating fair opportunities and a comfortable work culture for Black employees,”
Show me — evidence, not emotion– how what the DEI agenda does to make things “fair” or even “a comfortable work culture?” How exactly does attacking co-workers with slurs and charges of inescapable racism make for a “comfortable work culture?”
As pointed out elsewhere (Prof. Jacobsen, I believe) *enforcing* the laws already defining and supporting the civil rights of all Americans is the way to go.
Acting responsibly and performing one’s job satisfactorily is the reasonable request as part of the basic social contract. Demanding kneeling and figurative and literal boot licking isn’t that.
Checks notes for default social media response to people who face layoffs/unemployment:
LEARN TO CODE.
Did I do it right?
DEI professionals are losing their jobs, as layoffs across the economy have gained momentum.
WHAT do these ‘professionals’ do, in a company whose income depends on public sales of goods and/or services, other than bully their fellow workers on faux-moral grounds for thinking or saying the ‘wrong’ things – as defined by said ‘professionals’, of course.
That may be a superb way to lower morale and raise bad feelings between workers, but in what way would it increase efficiency or production? Fire them all ASAP, unless they’ll shut up, learn a job, accept a salary in line with their productivity, and LISTEN instead of talk.
To me, the question isn’t whether to fire “DEI professionals”. It’s which damned fools to fire for hiring them in the first place.
Who ever thought a commasar in a company was going to do anything other than destroy employees looking for reasons to keep them in their position?
What I think is that on a job application there should be initials for first and second names, no male or female indication, no white, black, Asian, religion anything about those things. Then fill in ones education, experience, whatever is pertinent to the job and choose from that info who to interview. Get rid of all of these faux diversity issues and hire folks for their ability. Cripes, nothing could make more sense than that!!! And nothing would wind up with better balance in the end. If they really wanted to even the scales they would quit cow-towing to the education union and promote and put in place school choice so that young people would not be trapped by welfare communities that are used as voting blocks!!