In the early 2010s, Apple, Google, and Microsoft began releasing diversity reports that described their company’s employee composition by race, ethnicity, and gender. The data revealed these tech giants hired a disproportionate number of white and Asian men and few Native American, Latinx, and Black people.

Apprenticeship programs mirror the lack of diversity in tech. Using federal data on apprentices, we calculated that only about one in four apprentices in tech programs is a woman, and there are even fewer Latinx and Black women tech apprentices. But these programs offer an opportunity to expand diversity in the tech space because they can help learners avoid student debt and provide immediate paid employment with industry-relevant, on-the-job training—key barriers to entry for many other fields.

White, male employees still dominate the tech workforce; only 25.9 percent of computer support specialists are women and only 27.8 percent are Latinx or Black. This is largely because of hiring teams’ biases—both conscious and subconscious. Evidence suggests white candidates may receive significantly more callbacks (PDF) based partly on the signaling provided solely by their name. Young Native American, Latinx, and Black people also face systemic barriers to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. They obtain fewer STEM degrees than their white counterparts because structural inequalities in wealth, access to affordable financing, and other costs to education are significantly higher for Black students than for white students.

Recently, the Urban Institute convened a panel of apprenticeship experts who identified three themes for improving diversity and inclusion in tech jobs through apprenticeship expansion. The panel included perspectives of experts from education, industry, community-based organizations, and apprentices themselves.

  1. Ensure apprentices see themselves represented in peers, teachers, and mentors
  2. Offer nontraditional pathways to quality jobs
  3. Make the business case for investing in apprenticeship

Read the full article about apprenticeships by Fernando Hernandez-Lepe and John Marotta at Urban Institute.