Groupon's diversity report: U.S. staff is 71% white

SAN FRANCISCO — Groupon is headquartered in Chicago where a third of the population is black and nearly a third is Hispanic.

But the city's Internet powerhouse does not reflect that rich diversity.

The overwhelming majority of Groupon's 12,000 employees in the U.S. are white — 71% — while 4% are black and 5% are Hispanic.

The numbers are even more anemic when it comes to leadership in the company: 88% of leaders around the world are white and 76% of leaders in the U.S. are white. In the U.S., blacks and Hispanics each account for 1% of Groupon leaders.

Women fare better at Groupon. Around the world, 53% of the company's workforce is male. But women make up a fraction of leadership at the company and account for 18% of tech workers.

In a blog post disclosing the diversity of its workforce for the first time, Groupon claimed to have an "inclusive culture."

But Nadia Rawlinson, Groupon's vice president of human resources, conceded, "we recognize that there is more we can do."

"As a company that is just six years old, our inclusion and diversity programs are evolving alongside our business," Rawlinson wrote.

Jesse Jackson has led the charge to diversify the high-tech industry.

He said Groupon released the make-up of its workforce at the urging of his Rainbow Push Coalition.

He called on Groupon and other technology companies to move beyond rhetoric of "doing better" and "turn high-sounding words into concrete action."

In releasing the numbers, Groupon said it's a company "that supports a transparent and open approach to this important conversation."

But it's unclear how much attention Groupon actually wanted to draw to its contribution to that conversation.

It released its diversity numbers as the technology media focused on one of the year's biggest news events: the blockbuster Alibaba IPO.

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