The overall size of the US Civilian Labor Force in the United States is estimated to be 159.23 million and is comprised of people who have jobs or are seeking unemployment. This number does exclude active-duty military personnel, institutionalized individuals, agricultural workers, gig workers and federal government employees. When looking at the labor force we broke that down further into the diverse workforce in the US.
In January 2021, there were approximately 128.6 million diverse individuals total in the United States labor force and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) loosely defines the labor force to include those ages 16 and older who are either working or actively looking for work. We have broken this down to include the approximate numbers of the current diverse workforce as well as the approximate numbers of those diverse workforce that is unemployed.
Additionally, the figures above can include the 4.1 million individuals who are long-term unemployed which is 41.5% of the total unemployed. The BLS defines anyone who meets the Current Population Survey definition of unemployed and whose unemployment has lasted for 27 continuous weeks or more. The unemployment rate while slowly decreasing for Asians in February little changed for African Americans, women and Hispanics.
While job openings have increased toward the end of 2020 a big employment gap remains for 2021. With the unemployment rates still high for diverse groups companies need to reach diverse groups and ensuring that they are given the same opportunities in the hiring process.
When looking at recruitment efforts make sure that every candidate is given a fair chance through the process which includes looking to reduce unconscious bias, reaching out to diverse community-based organizations, and ensuring the recruitment process is reviewed regularly. A great place for companies to start is through unconscious bias training, tools to reduce recruitment bias, like AI Candidate Matching, finding more diverse organizations to work with and focusing on defining benchmarks and establishing metrics to increase goals.
Circa’s new AI Candidate Matching can help companies to reduce bias in recruitment while reaching out to diverse candidates. AI Candidate Matching takes the civilian labor force above and includes additional groups that are not counted or have a hard time being accurately counted in that labor force from more than 3,500 diversity groups including the below groups.
Additionally, AI Candidate can remove biases from job descriptions and blindly screen candidates to remove ethnicity, gender, name, education, age or other factors to ensure that you are focused on matching the candidate’s skills to your job requirements.
Recruiting diverse candidates can feel like a daunting task so be sure to check out our latest resources to help you with a place to start Recruiting Essentials for a Diverse Pipeline webinar, Recognizing and Overcoming Unconscious Bias in Ourselves and the Workplace webinar, and How to Source Diverse Candidates whitepaper.
