Netflix has increased the diversity of its U.S. staff, including more Black top executives, as the company looks to have its workforce better mirror the broader population.
The number of Black employees at Netflix grew by more than 40% from 2020 to 2021, increasing their share of the company’s full-time U.S. workforce to 10.7%, the company said in its second annual inclusion report Thursday. Black employees now hold just over 13% of leadership positions in the U.S., while women make up more than half of Netflix’s full-time employees and leaders globally. Those figures exceed their share of the U.S. population. The streaming company’s Hispanic workforce, at 8.6%, continues to be under-represented among full-time staffers, the data show.
The picture is less rosy in the company’s broader workforce, which includes temporary staff for film and TV. Those workers are less female, less Black and more likely to include a high share of Hispanic workers in lower-level jobs such as laborers — demographics that continue to dog Hollywood overall. The U.S. population in the 2020 Census was just over 50% female, 12.4% Black, 18.7% Hispanic and 6% Asian, using the same classifications that Netflix employs to measure its workers.
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Netflix is part of a growing list of companies that are opting for full transparency of the gender and racial makeup of their staff, even when it doesn’t yet reflect their customer base or the general population. Netflix’s workforce has historically been more Asian — just under a quarter of staffers — and, until recently, more male. Companies including Starbucks Corp. and Target Corp. provide detailed breakdowns of their workforce across different roles. Intel Corp. also includes information on pay across race and gender.
In addition to the 2021 gender information on its 10,000 global employees and the race information for 7,300 U.S. workers, Netflix also released EEO-1 forms for 2019 and 2020 that showed the gender and racial breakdown of its workforce among 10 job classifications. Netflix says the EEO-1 form, which companies with 100 or more workers must submit annually to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes temporary film and TV workers that can fluctuate during the year. In 2020, the workforce of more than 13,000 people was 60% male, about 9% Black and almost 13% Hispanic — with Hispanic workers concentrated among the lower tiers of workers. The EEO-1 numbers indicate that Black representation improved from the 2019 report even as women slipped in share. Releasing the EEO-1 to the public is voluntary.
Netflix has said it has made inclusion a priority in recent years, hiring a head of diversity and inclusion in 2018 and boosting representation of different racial and ethnic minorities in Hollywood. Netflix said last year it was committing $100 million to programs that will give women and minorities a better shot at making it in Hollywood after a report it commissioned found that the gap still persists at the company, even though it’s ahead of peers in film and TV.
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Consumers might spend as much as $10 billion more, or an additional 7%, if film and TV projects were more racially diverse, McKinsey & Co. said in a report last year. Black-led projects have been underfunded and undervalued, despite often providing a better return on investment, the consulting firm said.
Netflix, where more than half of its U.S. workforce now comes from under-represented groups, says it is still working to boost the number of employees from historically marginalized backgrounds, in particular those who identify as Black and Hispanic. It has set up programs with historically Black colleges and universities, as well as Hispanic-serving institutions.
“Transformational change won’t happen overnight. Progress takes consistent discipline, heart and practice,” Verna Myers, Netflix’s vice president of inclusion strategy, said in a blog post. “We’re committed to doing our part in inspiring change within our industries — so more people can feel seen, heard and supported to contribute at their best.”
