Twin Cities minority employment is growing about three times as fast as the market for professional-technical fields in recent years, as I pointed out in a Monday column about Atomic Data's efforts to diversify the local IT business.
Twin Cities lags nation in minorities in tech jobs
Minorities in technology jobs growing in Twin Cities area but percentages lag national average.
October 18, 2016 at 2:47PM
However, the Twin Cities still lags the nation as whole.
The research staff at CompTIA, the computer industry trade group, provided the following figures: Thirty two percent of IT workers in the United States are minorities, it's estimated, based on census and employer data, including 16 percent Asian, 8 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic.
In the Twin Cities area, only 18 percent of IT workers are minorities, and 82 percent are white.
CompTIA used the larger, 16-county Twin Cities area, which would skew its findings toward a lower percentage of minorities, than the seven-county metro area that was cited Monday. And the Twin Cities has a lower percentage of minorities overall than some other major metro areas. Less than a quarter of citizens are minorities.
Sue Wallace, the local program manager of IT-Ready, the computer industry's eight-week training program that has brought about 300 women and minorities into the industry in recent years, said the recent gains in the local industry are encouraging in what was once pretty much a white-male enclave.
"Our mission at the Creating IT Futures Foundation, and the purpose of our IT-Ready program, is to create 'on-ramps' for those individuals who would otherwise lack access to the IT field," Wallace said. "The challenge lies in engaging the next generation to pursue careers in IT. CompTIA has been doing research in this area and has started an initiative called NextUp. Nationally, not enough young people are choosing technology careers compared to the size of the opportunity.
"From our work with IDEO-a global research firm-and our own research, we know that role models play an important role in career paths. Consequently, with fewer African-Americans and Hispanics in IT jobs that means there are fewer IT role models for young African-Americans and Hispanics. It's a cycle that many organizations are working to end. NextUp is specifically targeting this role model challenge by seeking partners who can provide meaningful opportunities for the CompTIA members and our certified alumni to engage with middle school kids and share what they do and why they love it."
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