DEI jobs running out of steam in local tech sector?

Rampant Silicon Valley tech layoffs coincide with hushed eliminations of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion positions, reports the ABC News. DEI careers skyrocketed by over 168% from 2019 to 2022, but are being quietly removed from more orgs/job boards—leaving some to wonder, did pandemic-era politics only spark flash-in-the-pan organizational Woke theater?

From September 2019 to September 2020, job postings for diversity, inclusion and belonging positions on the hiring website Indeed rose by 56.3%, the company said.

A LinkedIn study found that chief diversity and inclusion officer positions grew by 168.9% from 2019 to 2022.

The rapid organizational movement toward addressing inequalities was initially exciting for DEI professionals. But in just a couple of years, that excitement wavered as growth rapidly fell apart.

"The honeymoon is over," Cecil Howard, a DEI consultant and former chief diversity officer at the University of South Florida, told ABC News.

"Right after George Floyd's killing, everybody who didn't have a diversity office quickly created a diversity office," he added. "A few years later, they started realizing, 'We checked the box and things are a little quieter now.'"

DEI begins to disappear

Starting in late 2020 -- months after the killing of Floyd set off a racial reckoning -- a host of companies escalated cuts of DEI professionals, a survey of more than 600 companies from data firm Revelio Labs found.

Last year, the layoffs accelerated significantly, the study found.

One in three DEI professionals lost their roles over a one-year period ending in December, the survey said. Over that period, the study added, non-DEI workers experienced a relatively lower attrition rate of 21%.

The job losses owe to several trends: a sluggish economy that prompted cost cuts, a softening of the scrutiny that held corporations to account over racial justice and a rise of conservative backlash against DEI, some DEI professionals told ABC News.

This article originally appeared in the ABC News. Read the whole thing here.

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