Apple's Diversity Team Says Wage Gaps for Women and Minorities are Closed

Apple, like many tech companies, is overwhelmingly filled with white men, but this week it released a new diversity report underscoring progress the company has made in eliminating wage gaps.

According to its diversity page, 37% of new hires have been women, above the current breakdown of 32%, and "underrepresented minorities" ("black, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian, and Other Pacific Islander") have comprised 27% of new hires. Currently that demographic only accounts for 22% of Apple employees.

Rates mean very little without context, and Apple stresses to show that these figures have risen over the past few years, albeit slowly. In 2014, the percentage of women in the new employee class was 31%, and "URMs" (Apple actually uses this abbreviation) was 21%. White people still make up 46% of the new hires, almost twice as many as the next demographic. 68% of the company are men, and 77% in the tech sphere.

Read More: 6 Excuses for the Gender Pay Gap You Can Stop Using

While Apple is working on demographics of the company, it claims to have fixed issues of unequal pay for equal work. According to its figures, women and minorities earn $1 for every $1 men and white employees earn.

This, of course, isn't the whole story, because equal pay for equal work isn't mutually exclusive with certain demographics having an advantage within the company. To that end, even though white employees make up 56% of the Apple workforce, they make up 67% of the leadership positions, and 76% of the retail leadership positions, so there's still work to do. Fortunately, Apple's hiring initiatives seem to indicate it's up to the challenge.