Amazon 2015 Diversity Report Shows Gains For Minorities, Mostly In Warehouse Roles

SAN FRANCISCO — Online retail giant Amazon released its latest diversity report Thursday, showing strong gains for minorities. But while Amazon hired thousands of African-Americans and Hispanics for laborer roles, it managed to hire only a fraction of that amount for office positions.

The report shows Amazon's representation of African-Americans increased from 15 percent in 2014 to 21 percent by July 2015. Similarly, the representation of Hispanics grew from 9 percent in 2014 to 13 percent in 2015. The representation of women grew from 37 to 39 percent.

But the gains for minorities are starkly different when broken down by warehouse and office positions, such as technical, sales and management roles.

In warehouse roles, where Amazon hired thousands of minorities, African-American representation grew from 23.5 percent in 2014 to 26.9 percent in 2015. For all other positions, African-American representation only increased from 4.5 percent in 2014 to 5.1 percent last year.

The story is quite similar for Hispanics. Their representation in labor roles grew from 12.4 percent in 2014 to 17.8 percent in 2015. But for office positions, Hispanic representation only increased from 4.5 percent in 2014 to 5 percent last year.

To be specific, Amazon hired 15,514 African-Americans and Hispanics for warehouse roles from 2014 to 2015. It hired 1,467 African-Americans and Hispanics for office roles during the same period. Amazon's latest figures show that while the tech industry is welcoming more minorities, most of those hires happen at the entry or lowest levels of these companies.