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Federal Government Losing Ground in Hiring Minorities to Senior PositionsSpree

By Tyler Lewis

More minorities are working in the federal workforce, but they are not among the select few promoted and hired to senior positions in federal agencies, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) annual report on the federal work force.

Since 1996, every minority group increased its participation in the overall federal except African-American men, who dropped slightly. Despite the increase, Hispanic workers, at 7.6 percent of the overall federal workforce, are still underrepresented compared to their percentage of the civilian labor workforce (14 percent). In fact, there are no Hispanics in senior-management positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Minorities have made very little progress penetrating the highest pay scale in senior management positions in the federal government over the last 10 years. No minority group represents more than 7 percent of the top-level positions in the federal government.

"Minorities continue to make strides in federal employment. However, these statistics do show the inability of minorities to penetrate the federal government's glass ceiling," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). "It is highly improbable that in 10 years the federal government has not found a significant pool of qualified minorities for its array of management positions."

The private sector is doing far better at diversifying its top-level workforce. According to a xxx story at DiversityInc.com, among the five worst federal agencies for senior-management diversity, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, minorities participate at half the rate, on average, than they do with Top 50 employers. (This last sentence is unclear. What do you mean?)

Many business leaders say that the federal government could easily diversify at the highest levels. "The mechanisms exist to do what corporate America is doing ... Thirty years ago, the federal government was the protector. Now corporations have to lead the way," Weldon Latham told DiversityInc.

The EEOC, which monitors federal agencies, was established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, to monitor federal agencies and requires them to ensure equal employment diversity.

http://www.civilrights.org/issues/affirmative/details.cfm?id=46469