Attitudes Hinder Diversity

Hispanics are underrepresented in the federal workforce because of federal managers' attitudes toward diversity, the concentration of Hispanics in a few states and the effects of downsizing, a new report says.

Six percent of the federal workforce is Hispanic, compared with 10 percent of the overall U.S. workforce. Hispanics are the only minority group that is underrepresented in the federal government as compared to the country's total labor market. That, said Ben Erdreich, chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), "is inconsistent with the statutory goals of a workforce that is hired and advanced on merit and that is also representative of all segments of society."

But in a recent survey, MSPB found that more than two-thirds of the government's white managers and almost half of its Hispanic managers say Hispanics are not underrepresented in their work units. Only 42 percent of managers said they should be held accountable for achieving a diverse workforce. For white managers, the figure was only 35 percent. More than 60 percent of Hispanic managers and more than 70 percent of other minority respondents said they should be held responsible for diversity. Those figures, MSPB concluded, suggest that "increasing the representation of minorities in the managerial ranks should be part of the strategy to increase Hispanic representation."

The MSPB survey also found that while more than half of all Hispanics live in California and Texas, only 16 percent of federal jobs are located in those states. More than 40 percent of the 29,000 federal employees in San Antonio, Texas are Hispanic (San Antonio's population is 56 percent Hispanic). MSPB recommended that managers agressively seek out well-qualified Hispanic candidates from other parts of the country when there are few Hispanics living in their area.

MSPB found that several other factors contribute to the low number of Hispanic federal employees, including downsizing, citizenship requirements for federal jobs, and continuing discrimination in federal agencies.

MSPB recommended agencies create strategies to locate, hire and retain Hispanics, including recruiting employees at colleges with many Hispanic students, promoting more Hispanics into management positions, and committing senior leaders to the goal of diversity.