Hispanics In Tech Industry: Study Finds Latino Employees Severely Underpaid

A new study from the American Institute for Economic Research has made some startling findings about the pay scale of minority employees in the technology industry. This discrepancy is seen across many minority groups —Hispanics, Asians and African Americans — but Hispanics, in particular, make $16,353 less, on average, than their non-Hispanic colleagues.

"This is a larger differential in earnings than racial groups of color, such as blacks (whose earnings are expected to be $3,656 less than white workers), Asians (whose earnings are expected to be $8,146 less than white workers), and workers who identified “other” as their race ($6,907 less than whites)," write the authors of the study.

"What this tells us is that race and ethnicity matter, and they matter a lot," said Nicole Kreisberg, the senior research analyst who conducted the research, to USA Today. "Simply increasing diversity is not enough. We also have to talk about money."

The study — which takes into account various extraneous variables such as education, occupation, age, geography, gender, citizenship status, marital status and children in the home — is released within months of the study from Working Partnerships USA, which found that Hispanics (and African Americans) are underrepresented in Silicon Valley.

"Gender and ethnic disparities are reflected throughout the tech industry," writes the New York Post. "About 7 percent of tech workers are black or Latino in Silicon Valley and nationally. Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the US population, respectively, according to the most recent Census data."

And the proof is in the public data! Diversity reports released by many companies (from Facebook and Apple to Yahoo and Google) have revealed that technology companies are predominantly staffed with white males.

"At every point in the hiring process hidden bias trickles in," said Freada Kapor Klein, co-chair of the Kapor Center for Social Impact, to USA Today. "A drop at the stage of reviewing names on résumés, a few more drops at the stage of different gender and race styles of presentation during interviews and a steadier stream when it comes to who is expected to negotiate their salary and who isn't.”