Netflix’s workforce grew to more than half women and half people of color in 2021 according to Netflix’s latest internal diversity report, which represents a small uptick in representation for both groups compared to 2020’s report.
Women now make up 51.7% of Netflix’s global workforce, up from 48.7% in 2020, and women who are in leadership roles of director level and above now totals 51.1% women, a growth of 6.9%.
Netflix also says that half of the U.S. workforce, which is the only location where Netflix collects and reports race and ethnicity data, is now 50.5% people from historically excluded ethnic and/or racial backgrounds, up from 46.8% in 2020. This includes growth for Black employees specifically, from 10.9% to 13.3% – and Black leaders at the director and above level, from 11.2% to 13.5%.
This also comes as a result of Netflix growing its employee base globally overall, from about 8,000 to 10,000 employees globally in 2021, and adding about a thousand employees – from 6,300 to 7,300, in the U.S.
Last year, Netflix admitted a need for more Latinx recruitment, and in 2021 there was some minimal growth in that area in the U.S., moving up slightly from 7.9% to 8.6%, but the percentage of Latinx employees at the leadership level barely budged.
Netflix also says of the 22 people in its senior leadership team, 10 are women and five are U.S. leaders who come from underrepresented racial backgrounds.
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“We have a lot more work to do, particularly in recruiting more Latino/a/x, Indigenous and other historically excluded talent in the U.S. We’re also improving how we understand the representation of our workforce outside of the US reporting requirements – like additional gender identities, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, and in other countries,” Vernā Myers, VP of Inclusion Strategy with Netflix, and the author of the report, said in a blog post. “Transformational change won’t happen overnight. Progress takes consistent discipline, heart and practice. We’re committed to doing our part in inspiring change within our industries — so more people can feel seen, heard, and supported to contribute at their best.”
Among some of the steps Netflix says they’re taking in order to better increase representation include additional training for recruiters for inclusiveness, new benefits for gender-inclusive parental leave and an expansion of the inclusion strategy team.
You can find more of the data in the report and what Netflix is doing toward their goal here.