Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. released some race and gender data on its workforce for the first time in response to ongoing requests from civil rights and labor activists.
The company reported that 66% of its U.S. employees are members of a ethnic minority, although it did not provide any breakdowns on ethnicity. The company did not disclose its definition of the term “minority,” which can vary.
Broadcom employs about 2,400 workers in OC, and about 11,000 globally. It does not disclose its U.S. headcount.
The company reported that men comprise 84% of its workforce globally, or roughly 9,240 people.
That percentage is higher than other technology giants that have disclosed employment data, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter, each of which have about a 70-30 split.
Broadcom disclosed the data in its 30-page Corporate Sustainability report released this week.
A so-called diversity gap in the technology industry prompted a national debate last year when civil rights and labor leaders pressed some of the largest technology companies to disclose the genders and ethnicities of their employees. Facebook and a handful of others disclosed the information while others such as Qualcomm, Oracle and Yelp have so far declined.
The early evidence points to a wide gap in technology companies from the lower ranks to the executive level.
“The employment patterns are very bad, among the worst in the country” compared to other industries,” Jesse Jackson, founder of Chicago-based civil rights advocacy group Rainbow Push Coalition, told the Business Journal last year in a phone interview.
Jackson was the first public figure to call out Broadcom to disclose employment data.
The issue has gained prominence as H-1B worker visas for immigrants have come under more scrutiny as labor advocacy groups aim to bridge the income disparity between American engineers and their counterparts from overseas. Many of the immigrants are paid at a much lower rate than their peers with permanent U.S. residency.
Broadcom told the Business Journal today that it plans to disclose more employment data in the future.
“This is the first year that Broadcom has disclosed its workplace profiles as part of its 2014 Corporate Sustainability Report,” a company spokesperson said. “We look forward to expanding the report’s data and information over time.”
