A report published September 25 by Bloomberg, notorious for its financial acumen, conveyed a shocking yet spurious statistic that only 6% of new corporate hires are White following the 2020 death of George Floyd. This seemingly disconcerting narrative was scrutinized in a Daily Wire analysis published Saturday and proven as a glaring example of misinformation, resonating particularly with conservatives concerned with integrity and transparency in journalism.
Bloomberg’s initial claim suggested that a whopping 94% of new jobs created in 2021 were occupied by racial minorities. This statistic, if validated, would indeed substantiate a compelling narrative on racial discrimination in corporate hiring trends, given that Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics constitute approximately 40% of the U.S. population.
Read the story for the real numbers and how Bloomberg’s methodology is mathematically impossible and their story factually erroneous. (Besides the fact that common sense should have told them that McDonalds didn’t start hiring fry cooks based on DEI.)https://t.co/MXi9Z9O1wI
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) September 30, 2023
However, a more meticulous analysis by Daily Wire demonstrated that Bloomberg’s data interpretation was severely flawed and misleading. It revealed that the demographics of 2021’s hiring figures were not remarkably different from preceding years, with the percentage of new jobs that went to Whites being approximately 46%.
The flawed methodology involved isolating the 2021 cumulative headcount increase in S&P 100 companies and correlating this to the increase in minority employees, neglecting the crucial aspect of employee turnover and replacements. Bloomberg essentially got the denominator wrong, creating a skewed and distorted view of actual hiring practices.
Robert VerBruggen, an economic policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute, pointed out the changing demographics of the country, emphasizing that “if Whites are disproportionately retiring and non-Whites are disproportionately getting jobs, that will skew the numbers.”
Moreover, a respected pollster, Patrick Ruffini, labeled Bloomberg’s analysis as “statistically illiterate”, highlighting their disregard for the demographics of retirees and new workers and underlining the role of generational turnover in the workforce. The more significant oversight in journalism would be the failure to seek comments from the companies implicated in the report. This measure would have potentially illuminated the flawed methodology before publication.
It is also relevant to consider that, although Bloomberg purportedly framed this narrative as a triumph for Black Lives Matter, the analysis showcased that Blacks benefited the least in hiring, with the increase being just 1%. This was contrasted by Hispanics and Asians, whose hiring rates increased by 4% and 2%, respectively, reflecting the general demographic shifts in the United States.
Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, emphasized the stark nature of the numbers presented by Bloomberg, raising doubts over their legal defensibility and pointing to the broader implications such inaccurate reporting could have on perceptions of corporate diversity programs and their legality.
Once a bastion for astute financial analysis, Bloomberg failed to present a clear, accurate, and unbiased representation of corporate hiring data. Their methodology was questionable at best, with the potential to mislead the public and distort perceptions of corporate America’s hiring practices.
