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Boston’s new ‘data dashboard’ shows diversity (or not) of city’s workers

Mayor Walsh announced the release of a data dashboard this week that provides demographics of the city's workforce.

By Justine Hofherr

May 11, 2016

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In an effort to examine the inclusivity and diversity of its workforce, the city launched a new data dashboard this week that provides regularly updated demographics of the City of Boston’s employees.

The dashboard shows information on current staffing levels by race, gender, salary, and tenure, and is sortable by department.

The public can see that 53.7 percent of the city’s total employees are female.

Created in partnership between the Mayor’s Office of Diversity, the Citywide Analytics Team, and the Office of Human Resources, the dashboard will be used by the mayor and city staff to understand current workforce demographics and to track progress toward staffing goals.

However, if you eliminate Boston Public School employees from the dashboard, it shows that an overwhelming 68.7 percent of the city’s workers are men, and over 60 percent are white.

Some departments are notable for their lack of diversity.

The human resource department, for example, is over 80 percent female, while the fire department is 94.7 percent male.

“This dashboard will help us meet our goal of creating a workforce that is representative of Boston,” said Mayor Walsh in a statement.

You can see the interactive version here.