DEI Jobs Are Drying Up, But Colleges Keep Pushing Diversity Studies

[Kamaji]

DEI Jobs Are Drying Up, But Colleges Keep Pushing Diversity Studies

American universities are rushing to offer degrees in DEI when major U.S. corporations are laying off DEI-focused employees.

BY: HELEN RALEIGH
JULY 26, 2023

American universities and colleges are rushing to offer students degrees or certifications in so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) when major U.S. corporations are reportedly laying off DEI-focused senior officers and thousands of employees.

In the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, American companies were under tremendous pressure from various stakeholders to do more for social justice and racial diversity in the workplace. One of the most vocal stakeholders in the corporate world is Larry Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock, a trillion-dollar asset management firm. Weaponizing BlackRock’s enormous financial power, Fink has coerced many other American companies to adopt the “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) agenda. For example, in its 2020 annual reports, BlackRock bragged that it had “voted against management more than 1,500 times for ‘insufficient diversity’” in company management.

Responding to these external demands as well as corporate executives’ eagerness to virtue signal, American companies rushed to hire DEI professionals, including adding Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) to their top leadership. The Society for Human Resource Management reported in 2020 that DEI roles in the workplace increased by 55 percent following Floyd’s death. In a recent report titled “The Rise and Fall of the Chief Diversity Officer,” The Wall Street Journal found, “In 2018, less than half the companies in the S&P 500 employed someone in the role, and by 2022, three out of four companies had created a position.”

But since last summer, Big Tech companies such as Amazon and Twitter have led the way in laying off diversity professionals, followed by other well-known corporations such as American Airlines and Wells Fargo. A telling sign that corporations have less demand for DEI professionals was that “the number of CDO searches is down 75% in the past year,” according to the Journal. The attrition of DEI-focused employees has accelerated in the last six months, including the departures of high-profile CDOs at Netflix and Warner Bros. Revelio Labs’ 2023 report on the state of DEI shows, “Attrition rates for DEI roles have outpaced those of non-DEI roles at more than 600 US companies that laid off workers since late 2020, and have accelerated quickly in the last 6 months.”

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/26/dei-jobs-are-drying-up-but-colleges-keep-pushing-diversity-studies/

[Kamaji]

Once upon a time, I would have said something like "I hope they also learned how to say 'd'ya want fries with that?'" but that is no longer a viable career path for most libs, given that their own minimum wage nonsense is steadily pushing most of those jobs to automation and AI.

[Wingnut]

 I've always wanted to take out a $200K loan to go to college and get a DEI degree .

Judge Smails: Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too.