DE&I cutbacks, return-to-office mandates threaten wage equity in tech

As layoffs continue to gut DE&I efforts across the tech industry, the notorious tech wage gap is widening, most notably for Black and Hispanic tech workers.

That’s according to new data from job marketplace Hired, which shows that the wage gap between white men and most of their counterparts in underrepresented groups widened between 2021 and 2022.

Black women in tech—who in 2022 made 90 cents on the dollar compared to white men, down from 92 cents in 2021—represented the widest wage gap in the industry. Hispanic women made 92 cents on the dollar, down from 93 cents in 2021. Black men were making 93 cents on the dollar, down from 95 cents in 2021, while Hispanic men dropped from 99 cents on the dollar to 97 cents.

White and Asian women, who made 95 cents and 98 cents on the dollar, respectively, were the only two demographics for which the gap didn’t increase in 2022, the Hired report said.

“We believe that DE&I rollbacks are going to significantly hinder a company’s ability to attract qualified talent from a range of backgrounds and skill sets,” Hired CEO Josh Brenner said, earlier pointing to survey results from the report indicating that 20% of respondents said their organizations have “scaled back” DE&I teams. Another 12% believed DE&I initiatives could be more at risk for cuts in the future, depending on economic conditions.

Brenner also said that while remote hiring led companies to diversify their talent pools, return-to-office policies could disadvantage underrepresented groups.

That’s in part because underrepresented groups in tech don’t necessarily have the ability to start their careers in a major tech hub, he said.

“And so they’re at a disadvantage for companies that are limiting their hiring to San Francisco or New York,” Brenner said. “We think that is definitely going to risk undoing the progress that they have made, and potentially undoing some of the benefits.”

A bright spot: Hired’s data also focused on the impact of salary transparency legislation, which has gone into effect in several cities and states in the last few years.

“We’ve seen that salary transparency laws have positively impacted both the wage gap and also the expectation gap, pretty much across the board,” Brenner said. (Hired defines the expectation gap as the “difference in preferred salary between various groups.”)

Brenner pointed to San Francisco, which made the biggest strides toward pay equity, according to the report. Women in tech in San Francisco are making more than men in 2023—$1.02 on the dollar. That’s up from 95 cents on the dollar in 2022, before California’s pay transparency law went into effect.