Google has published statistics about the diversity of its US workforce and admitted it has work to do when it comes to employing more women and ethnic minorities.
"Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it's hard to address these kinds of challenges if you're not prepared to discuss them openly, and with the facts," noted Laszlo Bock, SVP of people operations at Google in a blog post.
The figures show that 70 per cent of Google's workforce is comprised of men and 61 per cent of all employees are white. Asian Americans, which in the US includes people whose origins are from the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, account for 30 per cent of personnel.
Worryingly, just 3 per cent of US Google employees are Hispanic and 2 per cent African American.
"There are lots of reasons why technology companies like Google struggle to recruit and retain women and minorities," Bock continued.
"For example, women earn roughly 18 per cent of all computer science degrees in the United States. Blacks and Hispanics make up under 10 per cent of US college grads and collect fewer than 5 per cent of degrees in CS majors, respectively."
Google claims the way to address this issue is to promote education. Bock claimed that since 2010 the search giant has donated $40 million to organisations promoting computer science to women and girls. The firm has also been working with historically black colleges and universities to try and increase interest in computer science.
