Conversation Starter: DEI jobs on the chopping block

The summer of 2020 was a tumultuous time with protests popping up throughout the US following the death of George Floyd. In response, many companies shifted their focus toward greater inclusivity, creating teams focused specifically on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). 

On Glassdoor, we can see this momentum grew until its peak in February 2022, with more than a 3 times (216%) increase in the number of job listings from August 2019. However, as the job market started cooling off towards the end of 2022 and 2023, companies began axing many of the new hires from the hiring boom during the pandemic, including these new diversity-focused positions. As of August 2024, DEI job postings are down a sharp 63% drop from their peak in February 2022, showing that DEI hiring remains on hold at many companies.

This trend is heavily influenced by the current slowdown in the job market, as total job postings have also declined over the same time period. However, we do see that DEI job postings, as a share of all job postings, are still 18% higher than in August 2019 before the pandemic. This suggests that while some companies took the lessons of the last few years to heart and are still trying to promote diversity, many companies see these positions as “nice-to-haves” and have slashed hiring plans as a result. 

Similarly, job applications started on Glassdoor for DEI job postings peaked in April 2022, a few months after job listings themselves peaked. They increased 318% from May 2020, clearly indicating that Americans were gladly embracing this change. However, as the momentum behind DEI initiatives began to wane, applicant enthusiasm for these positions dropped just as quickly. As of August 2024, job applications started are 72% lower than they were in August 2019. This data indicates that while some companies are still willing to hire, applicants may have caught on that these positions currently do not have a long shelf life. This reluctance may have unfortunate future implications as qualified applicants choose more traditional HR positions over those that can have greater cultural change.

Methodology

Glassdoor’s data comes from several hundred million job postings and tens of millions job applications started between January 1st, 2019 and August 31st, 2024. We normalize the data by calculating the ratio between the number of DEI jobs and the total number of jobs for a given month. Similarly, we normalize the number of job applications started on DEI job postings against the total number of job applications. This normalization allows us to mitigate some of the impacts from the business cycle driving a general increase or decrease in these measures. Jobs are classified as DEI related based on their titles including terms like “diversity”, “DE&I”, “D&I”.