Recession Takes Toll on ‘Diversity’ Jobs Throughout Corporate America

In the Washington Times today, reporter Sean Salai writes that hundreds of companies have less use for workers to staff diversity, equity and inclusion (or “DEI”) positions:

From Amazon to Walmart, hundreds of corporations have started eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion positions as inflation makes affirmative-action hiring a costly goal.

 

Big Tech layoffs have fueled a 33% turnover rate for DEI employees, compared to 21% for non-DEI positions, a recent study from Revelio Labs found. The workforce data agency’s report is among several showing sudden cuts in corporate affirmative action programs less than three years after racial justice protests prompted them to surge…

 

Over the past six months, more than 300 DEI professionals departed companies that conducted mass layoffs to cope with a slowing economy, the Revelio study found. Amazon, Twitter and Nike shed five to 16 DEI professionals each.

 

The departures “likely amount to the exodus of entire diversity teams” at some companies, Revelio said. Another factor: the growing number of states that have moved to ban DEI training in the public sector.

The director of National Legal and Policy Center’s Corporate Integrity Project, Paul Chesser, commented for the Times article:

“Public corporations are finally realizing, as tough times take hold, that DEI positions are luxuries, and destructive luxuries at that,” said Paul Chesser, director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Corporate Integrity Project, which buys shares in companies. “Hiring quotas and ‘cancel culture’ are two of the tools in the toolboxes with which race baiters and gender activists seek to tear apart the fabric of companies, extracting concessions and contributions to their groups while productivity suffers.”