A new study has found employment of Asian Americans has steadily increased over the last 50 years.
The report from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is titled American Experiences versus American Expectations and highlights some significant changes to the demographics in the workplace.
The new report, following the groundbreaking 1977 Black Experiences versus Black Expectations, examines participation in nine job categories for African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, American Indians/Alaskan Natives, and women between 1966, the first year of collected data, and 2013. The report comes on EEOC’s 50th anniversary and is based on surveys of employers with 100 or more employees.
The 2013 report represented the United States’ 20.8 million Asian Americans, roughly a 7 percent of the population.
The report indicates that Asian American participation in the workforce increased from 0.5 percent in 1966 to 5.5 percent in 2013 throughout all nine job categories. In addition, while Asian Americans held less than 1 percent of senior level positions in 1966, Asian American participation in this category had increased to 5.53 percent by 2013.
The same trend was also present for African Americans and Hispanics, whose participation had also increased by five or seven times by 2013.
Asian Americans experienced the greatest increase in the Professionals category among all the demographic groups, from 1.33 percent in 1966 to 11.46 percent in 2013.
EEOC also produced a fact sheet with key data points, litigation information, and agency outreach activities on each demographic workers covered in the report at www.eeoc.gov/statistics/reports/.
