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As she approached her 50th birthday last summer, Byrdsong Williams was pretty close to the top of her chosen field; her most recent job title was “global director of diversity, equity, and inclusion.” But now, “chief diversity officer” seems like a promotion that will never happen — for her, and for thousands of U.S. workers.
The anti-DEI “political climate” Byrdsong Williams refers to has been slowly bubbling up for years — even before President Trump was re-elected, and set things to a hard boil by immediately signing executive orders banning what he calls “illegal DEI.” Now scores of employers are in all-out retreat from anything adjacent to the word “diversity” — including the experienced DEI specialists who were once in high demand.
For example, just this month Verizon announced it was ending many of its DEI policies, as it sought the Federal Communications Commission’s blessing for a $20 billion merger. It promised the agency that its human-resources department “will no longer have a team or any individual roles focused on DEI.”
This retreat is decimating the job market for people like Byrdsong Williams. Since early 2023, U.S. employers have eliminated more than 2,600 jobs with words including “diversity” or “DEI” in the titles or descriptions, according to a data analysis conducted for NPR by the workforce analytics firm Revelio Labs.
That accounts for about 13% of the DEI-related jobs that existed in early 2023, at the peak of the hiring boom, NPR is the first to report. Now that boom has shifted firmly into reverse.
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The DEI backlash really started gaining steam in 2023, when the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action at colleges and universities. That same year, Bud Light lost more than $1 billion in sales due to a conservative boycott, after it hired a transgender influencer for a brief promotional video.
Then, within hours of his second inauguration, Trump ramped up the attacks with his executive orders. He called the programs “radical and wasteful” and discriminatory against non-minorities who, he said, are denied opportunities and recognition. Since then, his administration has declared open war on diversity programs from government agencies to universities, law firms, cultural institutions and more.
Now more big companies are fleeing the field. Walmart, Target, Amazon, and Meta are just a few of the mega-employers that have ended some of their DEI policies in the past six months, as dozens of others scrubbed words like “diversity” from even their driest public documents.
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This kind of work benefits most employers because it makes it easier to hire and retain good employees. Even some of the companies who are ending their DEI policies acknowledge this: “Delivering for customers requires attracting the best talent from across the country,” Verizon told the FCC this month, adding that it remains “committed to creating a culture that leverages and values each person’s unique strengths and talents.”
Verizon is in good company: Many of the employers retreating from DEI have said that they “remain committed to creating a culture where everyone can be successful,” as a Walmart spokesperson told NPR. And in some cases, they’ve renamed diversity initiatives with more generic terms. Target and Walmart now talk about “belonging,” while Meta’s one-time chief diversity officer now oversees something called “accessibility and engagement.”
Some big companies, including Costco and Delta Air Lines, are publicly defending their DEI initiatives (and the language they use to discuss them). Investors in Apple, Levi’s, and others have shrugged off anti-DEI shareholder proposals this spring.
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But they’re not hiring as many people to do this work anymore, whatever it’s called. Revelio Labs reports that companies are now more likely to post jobs that mention “belonging,” “social impact” or “culture” — but even those have fallen significantly from 2022.
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Executive recruiters confirm that they’re seeing a slowdown in companies seeking chief diversity officers and other top executives. “It’s a challenging time to be in diversity, equity and inclusion work,” says Yen Ling Shek of Russell Reynolds Associates, a global recruiting and advisory firm.
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For a few years, the DEI hiring boom offered more opportunities. According to Revelio Labs, women accounted for more than 71% of all DEI professionals from 2020 through 2024 — compared with 51% of other roles. Black and Hispanic workers together held only 21% of other jobs — but 33% of DEI roles.
Moreover, companies that remain committed to diversity do in fact tend to hire a more diverse workforce, especially Black and Asian workers, than companies without DEI teams, Revelio Labs found.
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The post Corporate America’s Retreat From DEI Has Eliminated Thousands of Jobs appeared first on American Renaissance.
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