Minority Employment Rate Has Tripled Since 1966
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has posted extensive new data on job patterns in the private sector, as part of the Obama Administration’s Open Government Initiative. EEOC posted 11 new aggregate data sets from the most recent edition of its report “Job Patterns for Minorities and Women in Private Industry,” commonly known as the EEO-1 survey, on www.Data.gov. The EEO-1 raw data extracts for 2008 may be downloaded at www.data.gov/catalog/raw/category/0/agency/119/filter/2008/type//sort//page/1/count/25.
These most recent data sets contain comprehensive labor force profiles of race, gender, and ethnicity divided by various job categories. According to the 2008 EEO-1 survey and historical data:
- Of the approximately 62 million private sector employees nationwide covered by the 2008 survey, about 30 million (48%) were women and 21 million (34%) were minorities;
- The rate of minority employment tripled between 1966 and 2008 from 11% to 34%;
- Among the four minority groups continuously measured, the employment rate for Black or African Americans increased steadily from 8% in 1966 to 14% in 2008;
- Hispanics or Latinos had the fastest growth rate in the private sector, increasing from 2.5% to more than 13% between 1966 and 2008.
- Women’s overall participation rate in the private sector jumped from 31% to 48% between 1966 and 2008.
The 2008 EEO-1 data extracts are designed to be of use to the general public, researchers, and academia, as well as application and data infrastructure developers and government agencies. Users may download the voluminous raw data sets for further examination and manipulation in a variety of ways, such as importing the data into spreadsheets, data bases, graphic presentations, and statistical software programs.
In addition to information on race, gender, ethnicity, and job categories, the EEO-1 survey also includes data on the size, location, and industry of employer establishments. Employers with 100 or more employees must file the annual survey, as well as employers with federal government contracts of $50,000 or more and 50 or more employees. Additional EEO-1 data and information, including user-friendly html tables and historical data, can be found on EEOC’s Web site at www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/statistics/employment/jobpat-eeo1/index.cfm.