Trump calls for end to DEI programs
President Donald Trump is calling for an end to federal diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs.
Fox – Seattle
Google has slashed hiring targets the company said were intended to increase the number of employees from historically underrepresented groups.
The move comes as the search giant says it is reassessing some diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Google is the latest major U.S. company to step back from its DEI commitments in the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Google told USA TODAY it was reviewing the president’s executive orders aimed at reversing DEI initiatives in the federal government and among federal contractors.
Google has contracts with the Defense Department and other federal agencies and is currently trying to secure AI contracts with the U.S. government.
Trump’s executive orders last month fulfilled his campaign pledge to “terminate” DEI and reverse Joe Biden’s “woke takeover” of America – goals championed by his close allies and cheered by crowds at his rallies.
Google is “evaluating changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic,” the company said in a statement.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 forced a historic reckoning with race in America, businesses doubled down on pledges to make their workforces and their leadership better reflect the communities they serve.
Google was among them. It set a 2025 target of increasing the number of historically underrepresented groups in leadership by 30%.
Signaling to the Trump administration and to shareholders that it was overhauling its approach, the company updated its annual report to remove a sentence about its commitment to “growing a workforce that is representative of the users we serve.”
“We’re committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities, and over the last year we’ve been reviewing our programs designed to help us get there,” the company said, noting that it would continue opening and expanding offices in cities with diverse workforces and that it would support its employee resource groups for workers from underrepresented groups.
Google follows Meta, Amazon in scaling back DEI
In retreating from DEI, Google is following in the footsteps of other major tech firms.
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta last month canceled its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the latest in a series of political maneuvers CEO Mark Zuckerberg made to align his social media company with the Trump administration. Meta said the sweeping policy shift was the result of the changing legal landscape for DEI.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was one of the tech CEOs with prime seating as Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20 in the Capitol rotunda.
The reversal was a sign of the changing times in Silicon Valley, where Google once positioned itself as a DEI champion.
After resisting calls to divulge the breakdown of its workforce, Google disclosed its demographics for the first time in 2014, opening up about the historic lack of diversity in Silicon Valley cubicles and executive suites and pledging to close the race and gender gap in its ranks.
That move by an industry leader ushered in a period of greater openness by major U.S. corporations. At the time, Google said a more diverse workforce was critical to its mission to better serve billions of users around the globe.
Google and the tech industry’s diversity problem
Google and the technology industry have long had trouble attracting and retaining women and people of color.
A 2021 USA TODAY analysis found Black and Hispanic workers were far less likely than white employees to work in management or professional roles in tech’s top companies.
At Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, white employees were five times as likely to land top jobs as their Hispanic co-workers and seven times as likely as their Black co-workers, USA TODAY found.
Though women gained some ground at Google over the years, the workforce is still dominated by men. According to the most recent data filed with the federal government, men account for more than two-thirds of executives and professionals and two-thirds of mid-level managers.
Google had more success in closing the race gap. Between 2017 and 2023, the percentage of workers who were non-white and non-Hispanic grew from 45% to 58%, a change of 13 percentage points.
Gains at the top levels of the company brought Google closer to the demographics of the nation’s workforce. At the same time, the company saw a decline in the percentage of white executives, from 74% to 63%.
But women of color at Google didn’t fare as well. In 2023, white men outnumbered white women 2-to-1 among executives; Asian men outnumbered Asian women by almost 3-to-1; and Hispanic men outnumbered Hispanic women 3-to-1, the data shows. The company reported similar, but sometimes smaller, gaps among managers and professionals.