DEI Wold Ends: Women, Minorities hardest Hit

lowering the flag

Diversity Officers Pink-Slipped Like Never Before During Black History Month

With layoffs hitting nearly every part of the American economy, one sector’s losses may actually be good news for the rest of the country. Highly-paid, under-worked diversity officers are often the first to go as Big Tech companies and other corporations announce massive layoffs. What’s more ironic, news of these layoffs is coming during Black History Month.

More than 2,400 corporate CEOs have signed a pledge every year since 2017 promising to have “difficult conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion.” But such noble commitment to equality is doing these corporations no service in this economy.

Listings for more Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) roles have dropped by 19% over the last year. This trend was perhaps most pronounced at Twitter, as the company’s new CEO Elon Musk slashed unproductive departments in the company. Musk, who reportedly plans to cut more than half of the tech platform’s 8,000 jobs, including all business resource groups (BRGs), which are informal employee groups made up of “women, parents, people of color, the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities.”

“A DEI worker who was let go from a popular ride-share company said their job search has stalled as other technology companies assess their finances. And just before getting the axe at separate tech giants this fall, two DEI specialists said leadership had stopped setting long-term goals for their departments entirely,” a Bloomberg report read. (RELATED: Tech Firms Slash Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Dept’s To The Bones, Surprising No One)

Listings for DEI jobs jumped by 123% after the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but a frigid economy is cooling the enthusiasm of woke corporations.

“Overall, definitely nontechnical roles are more affected, women are more affected,” Reyhan Ayas, a senior economist at Revelio Labs, told the Washington Post. “And [diversity, equity and inclusion] efforts in general have been hindered at least in some companies by the layoffs in the last year or so.”

Many liberal media outlets are framing the trend as evidence that companies cease to care about racial equality as soon as it ceases to be financially lucrative. Such a reading of events may not be so far off. Diversity officers are paid a hefty sum for their work, but no one seemed certain what they actually brought to the company, besides good public relations and a buffer against the woke mob.

“When economic conditions become uncertain, companies pare back their spending to the essentials,” said Andrew Crapuchettes, CEO of RedBalloon, a networking firm. “While well intentioned, most DEI programs are simply virtue signaling, often at the expense of healthy company culture. The c-suites understand this, and in choppy economic waters, DEI is likely slated to be among the first to go.”

(FWIW) Non-profit outfits like museums will doubtless continue to keep at least some CRT grads employed, as will for-profit institutions like universities, and governmental entities large and small with access to unlimited funds via coercion will be able to bury these people amid all their other useless employees, but at least there’s a ray of hope.