From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript For: State Department Workforce Diversity

Description: We're talking about a GAO report on the diversity of
State's workforce.

Related GAO Work: GAO-20-237: State Department:  Additional Steps Are
Needed to Identify Potential Barriers to Diversity

Released: February 2020

[ Background Music ]

[ Jason Bair ] Promotion outcomes were generally lower for racial or
ethnic minorities than for whites at the State Department. Welcome to
GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the
U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt Oldham.

[ Music ]

[ Matt Oldham  ] There have been longstanding concerns about the
demographic composition of the Department of State's workforce. For
example, in 1989, GAO reported that racial and ethnic minorities and
women were underrepresented in the Foreign Service. And with me to talk
about and updated GAO report on states workforce dynamics is Jason Bair,
an International Affairs and Trade director. Thanks for joining me,
Jason.

[ Jason Bair ] Thanks, Matt.

[ Matt Oldham  ] Does State's workforce have representation similar to
what we see in the overall U.S. population?

[ Jason Bair ] I would start by saying, you know, your question is
exactly the kind of thing that the State Department is committed to, you
know, in their diversity strategic plan, in numerous testimonies before
Congress, the State Department really has expressed their commitment to
maintaining a workforce that reflects the diverse composition of the
United States. When we looked through the lens of racial or ethnic
minority status, we found that when we looked at the three key
occupation groups of the State Department, in the civilian workforce, we
found that their proportion was higher at the State Department than they
were in the population at large. When we compared their proportions at
State versus the overall federal workforce, we found that the proportion
of the State Department was lower, 32%, than what we found overall
across the rest of the federal government where it was about 36%. When
we flipped it a little bit and looked through the lens of gender, we
identified that the proportion of women was lower in two of those three
occupational groups at the State Department than it was compared to the
rest of the civilian workforce. And then when we did the comparison to
the overall federal workforce, we found that both at State and at the
federal workforce overall, it was about 43% of the workforce.

[ Matt Oldham  ] Does this report offer a snapshot of the situation, or
did it look at trends over a period of time?

[ Jason Bair ] We looked at both snapshots and trends. And I think
they're helpful in different ways. So, I think the snapshots are an
opportunity to provide some insights about where the State Department
stands currently. So, for an example, we really did find that when we
looked at the proportion of women and ethnic minorities, we found that
they were smaller in the higher ranks in 2018. Specifically, we found
that racial or ethnic minorities were about 65% of the civil service at
the lower graded levels. But by the time you got to the executive
levels, they were only about 13% of that category. We also did look at
some trends. So, for example, we looked at the overall proportion of
racial or ethnic minorities in the workforce. And we found that it had
grown over the period we looked at, from 28% to 32% from 2002 to 2018.
In contrast, the proportion of women in State's workforce went from 44%
to 43%.

[ Matt Oldham  ] Is this true for all groups at State?

[ Jason Bair ] In short, the answer is no. While we did see certainly
that the overall proportion of racial or ethnic minorities increased, we
did see a notable decline in African American representation over the
last 16 years. Specifically, African Americans went, in the civil
service, went from 34% of the workforce down to 26% of the workforce.
Again, continuing on the civil service, we found that the proportion of
women declined there from 61% to 54%.

[ Music ]

[ Matt Oldham  ] So, it sounds like from 2002 to 2018, there was growth
in the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities at State, but the
percentage of African Americans and women dropped. Jason, did you look
at how State employees are being promoted once they enter employment at
State?

[ Jason Bair ] Yeah, absolutely, we spent a lot of time and analysis
focused on that. And what we found was that promotion outcomes were
generally lower for racial or ethnic minorities than for whites at the
State Department. While certainly nothing that we did in our analysis
would indicate that there's any kind of illegal discrimination going on,
we did find the disparity in the experiences in those groups. One of the
things that we found was that promotion rates for racial or ethnic
minorities were about 6-- between 16 and 42% lower than they were for
whites over the course of the time. But we decided we wanted to kind of
dig a little deeper, and so we built a more sophisticated statistical
model, where we tried to build in additional factors so we could kind of
filter out effects on things like education, the length of time someone
had been at the State Department, factors that reasonable people might
say could have an impact on whether or not someone was likely to get
promoted. What we found when we did those analyses is that the
differences did persist. They were lower and generally smaller than when
you do the simple calculations. But there still were different
experiences for racial or ethnic minorities than there were for whites.

[ Matt Oldham  ] So, how can the State improve things?

[ Jason Bair ] The State Department should build on its existing efforts
to identify diversity issues that might indicate some kind of a
potential barrier to equal opportunity. And I think they have a number
of opportunities that they're taking advantage of to varying degrees. I
think another area that the State Department could continue to explore
is understanding the root causes behind some of the differences that
come up not only in our data analysis, but some of their data analyses,
and some of the things you might hear from the employee resource groups.
Because really getting at those root causes of understanding what might
be creating some of these potential barriers for diversity is really a
big step toward being able to address them.

[ Matt Oldham  ] Final question, what's the bottom line?

[ Jason Bair ] The bottom line for us from all of our work is that the
State Department has made some gains in improving the diversity of its
workforce overall. But I think some additional efforts really could help
them identify and address any barriers that continue to remain to equal
opportunity.

[ Matt Oldham  ] Jason Bair was talking about the state of diversity
within the Department of State's workforce. Thank you for your time,
Jason.

[ Jason Bair ] Thank you.

[ Matt Oldham  ] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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