FACT CHECK: Is 70 Percent of Google’s Workforce Male?
Fox News’ Juan Williams claimed Tuesday that men make up 70 percent of Google’s workforce.
Verdict: True
Sixty-nine percent of Google’s workforce was male in 2018 and 31 percent was female.
Fact Check:
Williams, a co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” made the claim after fellow co-host Greg Gutfeld brought up a recent pay equity analysis from Google that showed that the technology giant was underpaying some male employees.
Adjustments in pay, totaling $9.7 million, were given to nearly 11,000 Google employees, many of whom were men. “Men were flagged for adjustments because they received less discretionary funds than women,” the company said in a blog post. Google also made pay adjustments for new hires.
“For years, the media has told us that men get paid way more than women for the same work,” Gutfeld said in a monologue. “Take Google, who has been accused of underpaying female workers. But when they investigated this charge, they found what, they indeed were underpaying men.”
“They have fewer women working in engineering,” co-host Dana Perino pointed out. “That’s a whole different problem.”
“To me the larger part is this – 70 percent of their workforce is male,” Williams responded.
Williams’ claim is supported by Google’s 2018 diversity report, which shows that 69.1 percent of all employees are male and 30.9 percent are female. Female representation at Google has only increased 0.3 percentage points since 2014.
There were nearly three times as many men in leadership positions as women in 2018, 74.5 percent versus 25.5 percent. According to Google, white men made up 52.4 percent of all leadership positions, down from 53.8 percent the previous year. Men made up most of the new hires in 2017, 68.8 percent.
While men make up the majority of the workforce at Google, women see more representation in non-tech jobs. Women made up only 21.4 percent of all tech positions at the company, but 47.8 percent of non-tech positions.
Google acknowledges these disparities and says it is working to improve gender and racial diversity at the company.
“The data in this report shows that despite significant effort, and some pockets of success, we need to do more to achieve our desired diversity and inclusion outcomes,” reads the report. “We care deeply about improving workforce representation and creating an inclusive culture for everyone.”
In early 2017, a Labor Department official accused Google of “systemic” disparities in compensation against women, a charge that Google has strongly denied.
