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 hear more podcasts, subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, and make sure you leave a rating and review to let others know about the work we're doing. For more from the Congressional Watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, visit us at gao.gov.