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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
London, West End, United Kingdom, 01/15/2009 - Ethnic minorities might never be proportionally represented in the UK workplace according to a report, from Business in the Community’s Race for Opportunity campaign, published today.
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Ethnic minorities might never be proportionally represented in the UK workplace according to a report, from Business in the Community’s Race for Opportunity campaign [see notes to editors], published today. Based on detailed analysis of the Office of National Statistics’ Labour Force Surveys between 2000 and 2007, the report, titled ‘Race to the Top’, is the UK’s most comprehensive investigation into the place of ethnic minority groups in the workplace and, most notably, within management. The report reveals that:
Ethnic minorities are not gaining the share of jobs that their population would justify;
The gap between the overall ethnic minority population and those in management positions is even greater;
On current trends, ethnic minorities in management will never be in line with their representation in the overall population.
Sandra Kerr, National Campaign Director, Race for Opportunity, commented: “Barack Obama won the most high profile management post in the world with the slogan “Yes, we can”. The evidence we have found from this research is that without major and urgent policy intervention or action from businesses, the message to ethnic minorities aspiring to management in the UK is: “No, you won’t. The disappointing implication is that there may still be a colour bar to management jobs in the UK 33 years after the passing of the landmark Race Relations Act of 1976”.
The conclusion of the research is simple: non-white workers have failed to secure the share of management posts that the size of the population would justify. More than one in 10 of the British population comes from an ethnic minority group, (up from around one in 14 at the start of the millennium). In comparison, just one in 15, or 6.8 percent, were in a management position at the end of 2007, (up from 4.4% in 2000.)
If the growth rates seen in the last seven years continue over the next seven then by 2015, 15.2 percent of the population will come from an ethnic group but only 11.2 percent will have achieved the heights of management. A gap of 3.5 percentage points in 2007 will have widened to 4 percentage points in seven years’ time.
More generally, the report also shows that ethnic minorities are not proportionally represented at any level of the UK workforce. Ethnic minority people’s share of the total population has risen from 7.3 percent in 2000 to 10.3 percent at the end of 2007. This is the workforce of the future. But the story of this decade is that its share of the employed population has failed to match that increase, growing from 5.4 percent to just 8.5 percent over the same period.
While the last seven years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of ethnic minority managers employed in public administration – from 25.7 percent to 33.2 percent - there have been falls or stagnation in all other sectors. Just three sectors account for almost 80 percent of all ethnic minority workers in management positions. The largest employers are those in public administration, education and health - an ONS category that is heavily weighted towards the public sector - followed by firms in banking, finance and insurance. Banks and other finance houses in particular have made large strides towards improving the diversity of their workforce in recent years.
A regional breakdown of the data reveals that more than half of ethnic minority managers in the UK work in London. In fact, almost a quarter (23.6 percent) of all managers in London are from the ethnic minority population. However, other regions have responded to the mix of talent on offer in the labour market and the city’s share of the UK total has narrowed to 51 percent, down from almost 60 percent at the start of the decade. Areas such as Eastern England and the North East have increased their shares with very strong growth since 2000.
Patrick Clarke, Board member of Race for Opportunity and Director of Connections, EDF Energy, added: “If no action is taken now then the problem will not just remain, it will get worse. It is time for a change, not just on moral grounds but on commercial grounds. Organisations are wasting an opportunity to a secure competitive advantage by attracting, nurturing and retaining talented people who bring new ideas and innovation to business.”
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