Workers engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) roles have lost jobs at a higher rate than other employees since 2020, with Amazon registering the most number of such terminations, according to workforce analytics firm Revolio Labs.
“Over 300 DEI professionals have left from these companies in the last six months. Amazon, Twitter, and Nike have shed between five and 16 DEI professionals each, and Twitter’s infamous diversity team layoffs are not far behind,” Revolio stated.
“Bearing in mind the typically small size of DEI teams—the median DEI team size in this set of companies is three—these outflows likely amount to the exodus of entire diversity teams.”
Slashing DEI Jobs
DEI job openings were on an uptrend prior to the pandemic, and hit an all-time high at the beginning of March 2020, with more than 1,000 jobs listed at recruiting site Glassdoor at the time, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, DEI job hiring fell by 60 percent. DEI jobs were found to have fallen at twice the rate of overall job openings.
Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, many companies had pledged to invest in DEI roles. However, the trend has now changed.
Acting Against DEI Agenda
In a Feb. 4th letter, Texas Republican governor Greg Abbott’s office warned public university leaders and state agencies that hiring for any reason other than merit is against the laws of the state. Both federal and state laws “forbid discrimination” in employment based on an individual’s race, it stated.“Indeed, rather than increasing diversity in the workplace, these DEI initiatives are having the opposite effect and are being advanced in ways that proactively encourage discrimination in the workplace,” the letter said.
“Illegally adding DEI as a condition of employment leads to the exclusion and alienation of individuals from the workplace.” In recent years, “the innocuous-sounding notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others.”
Out of this $2 million, $800,000 went to speakers who talked about DEI and represented the largest spending category.