Companies in the top quartile for executive-team gender diversity are 39% more likely to outperform their bottom-quartile peers on profitability, and the same 39% edge holds for ethnic diversity, according to McKinsey’s Diversity Matters Even More study of 1,265 companies in 23 countries. Yet representation is still uneven. Women make up 47.1% of employed Americans but only 11.3% of construction workers, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2025 annual averages, and women hold just 29% of C-suite roles, according to McKinsey and LeanIn’s 2025 Women in the Workplace report. This 2026 guide pulls the latest numbers from primary sources and adds the industry-level data most diversity roundups skip.
Summary / Key statistics at a glance
- 39%: higher likelihood of financial outperformance for top-quartile companies on executive gender diversity, and the same for ethnic diversity (McKinsey, Diversity Matters Even More, 2023).
- 47.1%: share of US employed workers who are women in 2025 (BLS).
- 11.3%: share of construction workers who are women in 2025, versus 29.1% in manufacturing and 13.7% in mining and oil and gas extraction (BLS).
- 29%: share of C-suite roles held by women in 2025, unchanged from 2024; women of color hold 7% (McKinsey and LeanIn, December 2025).
- 93 per 100: women promoted to manager for every 100 men in 2025; the figure is 74 for women of color (McKinsey and LeanIn, 2025).
- 22.8% vs. 65.2%: employment-population ratio for people with and without a disability in 2025 (BLS, March 2026).
- 19.1%: share of the US civilian labor force that is foreign born in 2025 (BLS, May 2026).
- -68%: drop in S&P 500 companies’ use of the acronym “DEI” in major filings between 2024 and 2025 (The Conference Board).
- $660 million: recovered for 17,680 people by the EEOC in fiscal year 2025, an agency record (EEOC).
Who Makes Up the US Workforce in 2026
The baseline matters before any benchmark. The BLS Current Population Survey counted 163.5 million employed Americans in 2025. Women were 47.1% of them, Black or African American workers were 12.7%, Asian workers were 7.5%, and Hispanic or Latino workers were 20.0%.
Age is part of the picture too. Roughly 23% of employed Americans were 55 or older in 2025, based on BLS employment counts by industry and age. The foreign-born share of the labor force reached 19.1%, and their employment-population ratio was 63.5%, according to the BLS foreign-born workers release published in May 2026.
Foreign-born workers are concentrated in different jobs than native-born workers. About 13.3% of foreign-born workers were in construction and natural resources occupations, compared with 7.9% of native-born workers (BLS, 2025). That makes language access, safety training, and credential recognition real diversity issues on job sites, not just HR talking points.
The Business Case for Diversity, by the Numbers
The financial argument is the most-cited one in this field, so it helps to get the details right. In McKinsey’s 2023 analysis, top-quartile executive teams for gender diversity were 39% more likely to outperform bottom-quartile teams on profitability. The same gap appeared for ethnic diversity. At board level, the advantage was 27% for gender and 13% for ethnicity.
The trend is what stands out. McKinsey found the gender-diversity profitability gap grew from 15% in 2015 to 39% in 2023. The firm also reported that top-performing companies are those that pair diverse leadership with inclusive practices, not representation alone.
Correlation is not causation, and McKinsey says so. A fair reading is that diverse leadership and strong results travel together, and that companies with a wider talent pool tend to have more options when roles are hard to fill.
Women at Work: Where the Pipeline Narrows
The 2025 Women in the Workplace report (published December 9, 2025) covers 124 organizations and roughly 3 million employees. It shows a pipeline that narrows at every step:
| Level | Women’s share, 2025 |
|---|---|
| Entry level | 49% |
| Manager | 42% |
| Senior manager or director | 39% |
| Vice president | 35% |
| Senior vice president | 32% |
| C-suite | 29% |
The first promotion is where the gap opens. For every 100 men promoted to manager, 93 women were promoted, and only 74 women of color. Ambition is part of the story, though not all of it: 69% of entry-level women said they want a promotion, versus 80% of entry-level men.
BLS data confirm the pattern in the executive ranks. Women were 33.0% of chief executives and 41.8% of management occupations overall in 2025, according to BLS occupational data. Black workers were 5.6% of chief executives and Hispanic workers were 8.4%.
The gap is just as visible by race and ethnicity. Black workers were 12.7% of all employed Americans in 2025 but 8.8% of management occupations, and Hispanic or Latino workers were 20.0% of employment but 13.5% of management (BLS). Asian workers, at 7.5% of employment and 7.4% of management, were the closest to parity. For employers, the practical takeaway is that representation at entry level does not automatically carry upward; promotion and development practices decide who reaches leadership.
Diversity in Energy, Construction, Manufacturing, and Transportation
Most workplace diversity statistics pages average everything together. Industry data tells a sharper story. Using BLS 2025 industry tables:
| Industry (2025) | Women | Black | Asian | Hispanic or Latino |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All employed | 47.1% | 12.7% | 7.5% | 20.0% |
| Mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction | 13.7% | 7.2% | 2.8% | 25.8% |
| Utilities | 21.3% | 9.1% | 5.9% | 15.5% |
| Construction | 11.3% | 6.6% | 2.3% | 35.4% |
| Manufacturing | 29.1% | 10.6% | 8.1% | 18.7% |
| Transportation and warehousing | 25.5% | 21.4% | 7.5% | 24.8% |
A few readings stand out. Construction has the lowest share of women of any of these sectors but the highest Hispanic or Latino share, at 35.4%. Transportation and warehousing has the highest Black share, at 21.4%, well above the national 12.7%. Manufacturing comes closest to the national benchmark for women, though it is still 18 points short.
Occupation-level numbers are starker. Women were just 4.3% of construction and extraction occupations in 2025, 3.5% of electricians, and 3.1% of carpenters, per the BLS occupational table. Among construction managers, women were 8.5%, and Black workers were 5.6%. In industrial engineering, women were 23.3%.
These gaps are a hiring problem and a growth opportunity at once. The US Department of Energy’s 2026 US Energy and Employment Report counts 8.4 million energy workers in 2025, about 5% of all US employment, with a median salary of $63,000 against $51,000 for the national median. Employers in energy, construction, and related fields that widen their candidate pools reach into a much larger share of the labor market. Firms staffing project teams can see how that plays out in construction recruiting, where skilled trades and field leadership roles are among the hardest to fill.
Disability, Age, and Other Dimensions
Disability is one of the largest and least-tracked parts of workplace diversity. In 2025, BLS reported that 22.8% of people with a disability were employed, against 65.2% of people without one. Unemployment was 8.3% for workers with a disability, up 0.8 percentage points, versus 4.1% for workers without.
Job structure differs as well. About 30% of employed people with a disability usually worked part time, compared with about 17% of those without. Self-employment was higher (9.1% vs. 5.9%), while only 37.5% worked in management and professional jobs, compared with 43.9% of workers without a disability. BLS notes that October 2025 data were excluded because of the federal government shutdown, so annual figures rest on 11 months of data.
On age, manufacturing has the oldest workforce of the major industrial sectors. About 25% of its workers were 55 or older in 2025, versus roughly 22% in construction and utilities (BLS industry-by-age data). Retirements and generational turnover will reshape these workforces over the coming decade.
Emerging Trends and What’s New in 2026
Companies are talking about diversity differently. The Conference Board’s analysis of 2025 annual filings, reported by Fortune, found use of the acronym “DEI” fell 68% among S&P 500 companies between 2024 and 2025. More than a third of S&P 100 companies stopped using the word “equity” altogether, and reporting on women in management dropped 16%. Practices may be changing slower than the vocabulary, but public disclosure data are getting thinner. Anyone tracking representation in 2026 should expect fewer corporate datapoints and rely more on government sources like BLS.
Enforcement is not slowing. The EEOC reported record recoveries in fiscal year 2025: $660 million for 17,680 people, including a record $528 million from pre-litigation enforcement. Whatever an employer calls its program, anti-discrimination law still applies to hiring, pay, and promotion.
AI is a new support gap. In the 2025 Women in the Workplace data, only 21% of entry-level women said their managers encourage them to use AI tools, compared with 33% of men at the same level. McKinsey notes that employees who are encouraged to use AI are over 50% more likely to use it, which means uneven encouragement can become an uneven skills gap.
Promotion math is the lever. With women at 49% of entry-level roles but 29% of the C-suite, the McKinsey and LeanIn data point to the first step up to manager as the highest-return place to intervene.
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