Amazon, Unclear on Diversity

Amazon, like most tech companies, is staffed and run mostly by white males.

The Seattle company disclosed on Friday in a lengthy page on its website titled “Diversity at Amazon” that its global work force is 63 percent male and 37 percent female. Its managers are 75 percent male and 25 percent female.

In the United States, Amazon’s work force is 60 percent white, 15 percent black, 13 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic. Its managers are 75 percent white and 18 percent Asian. Black, Hispanic and “other” more or less equally split the rest.

Diversity at tech companies has been a public issue for some time. The questions have accelerated since March, when the Rainbow PUSH Coalition challenged the companies to reveal their racial and gender data. By the end of the summer, many did so. But Amazon never likes revealing data about anything to do with Amazon, and so it took some special urging by the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr., the coalition’s founder and president.

Rainbow PUSH said Amazon’s numbers were not as good as they appeared, and criticized the company for a lack of candor.

“Their general work force data released by Amazon seems intentionally deceptive, as the company did not include the race or gender breakout of their technical work force,” the statement said. “The broad assumption is that a high percentage of their black and Latino employees work in their warehouses.”

Amazon has 150,000 employees, up 36 percent in the last year. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rainbow PUSH said it was seeking meetings with Amazon to pursue the matter. It noted that the retailer, like many tech companies, had “an all-male management” and no blacks or Latinos on its board.

Just this week, a high-ranking female executive at Amazon credited with making the retailer’s ad business into a viable force announced her departure. Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon’s vice president of global advertising sales, is reportedly going to Yahoo.