Corporate diversity database: A USA TODAY investigative series inside the nation’s most powerful companies

Why does corporate America look nothing like America?

That is the question behind a USA TODAY investigative series exploring deep disparities inside the nation’s largest companies.

Reporters Jessica Guynn and Jayme Fraser, along with fellow journalists at USA TODAY, use federal workforce reports, census data, corporate filings and other records to document the slow progress toward equal opportunity in the S&P 100.

What we’ve found: The top ranks are still predominantly white and male, while women and people of color are concentrated at the lowest levels with less pay, fewer perks and little opportunity for advancement.

How we do it: Every year, companies send the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a one-page form called an EEO-1, counting workers by race, ethnicity and gender in 10 occupational categories.

Federal officials do not release those records to the public, but to date most companies in the S&P 100 have voluntarily released their EEO-1s to USA TODAY. Our EEO-1 database is periodically updated with new data. (The database is current as of July 25, 2022.)

USA TODAY also uses other datasets to examine the representation of demographic groups.

If you have questions or suggestions, contact senior reporter Jessica Guynn at jguynn@usatoday.com or data reporter Jayme Fraser at jfraser@gannett.com.

Search diversity data among USA’s largest companies

Select options from the table below to see the demographic information reported by America's largest companies to federal regulators, which USA TODAY collects and updates each year.

Who has the power in corporate America? Men do.

Women remain outnumbered in senior leadership and the gap is widest for women for color, according to a USA TODAY analysis of named executive officers at the nation's 100 top publicly traded companies. Read the story

How diverse is corporate America? There are more Black leaders, but white men still run it

Two years after George Floyd's murder forced the nation to confront systemic racism, Black corporate leaders are making progress in the nation’s 100 largest publicly traded companies, a new USA TODAY investigation has found. Read the story

A Black CEO says he’s optimistic about improving corporate diversity

Chris Womack is one of the nation's top CEOs and one of its top Black leaders. In a wide-ranging interview with USA TODAY, he said America's biggest companies can achieve equity if they commit to addressing the challenges. Read the story

This new CEO wants to inspire a new generation of Black leaders at the top of corporate America

Calvin Butler Jr., a first-generation college graduate and the new CEO of Exelon, wants to show young people that they, too, can reach the highest ranks. Read the story

Corporate boards used to be mostly white and male. That has changed since George Floyd’s murder.

A year after its initial analysis, USA TODAY studied the demographics of corporate boards at an even wider swath of American businesses. The findings were mixed: Though  people of color, including women, were named directors at a record pace, white men still hold the majority of board seats at dozens of brands even though they account for only a third of U.S. workers. Read the story

2 years after George Floyd pledges, Black women still denied top jobs at largest companies.

In an annual update that drew on data from 287 companies, USA TODAY found that stark racial inequities persist at America’s biggest companies despite pledges to do better. Reporters dig into why the gaps are among the widest for Black women. Read the story

Only two Latinas have been CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Why so few Hispanic women make it to the top.

Hispanic women and Latinas hold few executive jobs at America's biggest companies and are underrepresented among managers and professionals. We spoke to those who have made it into leadership to understand the barriers and why their voices are important to the bottom line.  Read the story

Asian women are shut out of leadership at America’s top companies

Few Asian women break into the senior executive ranks of top companies, a USA TODAY analysis found. They are Asian women are half as likely as white women to be executives, on par with Black and Hispanic women. Reporters spoke with researchers and Asian women leaders about why. Read the story

Openly gay in the boardroom: Why so few LGBTQ executives lead America's largest companies

Despite the flashy rainbow-colored celebrations companies put on each year for Pride Month, there are few openly gay leaders serving on corporate boards. We spoke to LGBTQ business leaders about representation and tracking in a country with hostile public policy toward that community. Read the story

Outed BP CEO John Browne on why LGBTQ executives hold so few jobs

John Browne was the first CEO of major company to publicly say he's gay and later wrote a book about the scandal that outed him. In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY, he discussed his experience and why progress has been slow.  Read the story

Another year of data, another year of workplace divides

Months after this series was launched, American companies were required to submit new data to federal regulators on their workforce. USA TODAY analyzed the latest wave of releases and explained the growing pressure from investors and shareholders to be more transparent and make more progress. Read the story

Not separate, still not equal

For Black History Month, reporters explored the history of workplace discrimination against Black Americans and dissected why significant gaps persist at the top of companies today. Rodney O’Neal, one of 19 Black CEOs in the history of the Fortune 500 list, shared the story of how he rose from making steering wheels to being CEO. Read the story

This is America: Black and Hispanic workers are still not getting a fair shake at work

In the newsletter “This is America,” reporters take readers behind the scenes of how the corporate diversity series started and provide an overview of their findings from the project's first eight stories. Read the story

‘We are fundamentally a racist and sexist society’

The series launched with a sweeping look at the leadership in corporate America and the profound racial and gender gaps that persist decades after federal laws were passed to bar employment discrimination. The unique data analysis found that America's largest companies were often less diverse than others in their industries and the U.S. labor force as a whole, putting them out of step with the people and the country they serve. Black and Hispanic workers, especially women, were among those with the biggest gaps between workers and executives. Read the story

What Amazon, Disney, Walgreens and others won’t tell you about the diversity of their workers

Some of the nation’s most powerful brands still refuse to disclose data on the gender and racial makeup of their workforce – even though they are required to report that data annually to federal officials. Reporters dig into why the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has refused to release those one-page forms, called an EEO-1, to the public despite an ongoing lawsuit and what insights they could provide about corporate promises for equity. Read the story

How (and why) tech’s corporate giants haven’t diversified their workforces

Jessica Guynn first investigated diversity among some of the globe's biggest tech companies in 2014. Years later, she found little has changed. A USA TODAY analysis shows that the young sector, largely born after the civil rights movement, is reproducing the kind of gaping racial disparities commonly exhibited by more mature industries like banking. Read the story

Ursula Burns weighs in on the fight for racial justice in corporate America

In 2009, Ursula Burns became the first Black woman to run a Fortune 500 company: Xerox, which she left in 2016. Today, only two Black women are CEOs of the nation’s largest businesses. In an interview with USA TODAY, Burns described her journey to the top of American business and made clear what corporate leaders must do to make good on promises for diversity, equity and inclusion. Read the story

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on why corporations must end racial discrimination

“Values cannot be words on a wall,” he told USA TODAY for an exclusive Q&A. “Values need to be actions you publicly stand up for.” Read the story

White men continue to dominate leadership at banks, financial companies

A much higher percentage of white employees at the top banking companies hold professional and leadership positions than their Hispanic and Black coworkers. Although major players in the industry have made progress in recent years by shrinking racial gaps among managers, USA TODAY found that the divide remains wide among executives. Read the story

America’s food retail executives still mostly white and male

From Coca-Cola to Costco and Starbucks to Target: The staff ringing up your order largely mirrors America, but the people earning the big salaries and making the big decisions at those companies do not, according to a USA TODAY analysis. Read the story

Diverse leaders struggle to crack corporate boardrooms

Companies often point to the diversity of their boards of directors to distract from the concentration of white men in their corporate suites. But board membership at the companies examined by USA TODAY also did not reflect the racial makeup of their workforces, let alone the nation’s overall population, a year after many made promises following George Floyd’s killing. Read the story

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Diversity in corporate America: Track workforce in searchable database