To boost employee diversity. "In
the first 6 months of this year, nearly 50 percent of the people we've
hired in the United States are women, Black, Hispanic, or Native
American," Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a message on the company's
website. Cook maintained there was "a lot" more work to be done.
Apple had 92,600 full-time employees as of September 2014. Diversity
reports in the recent past have spurred a national debate about the
lack of diversity at Silicon Valley's tech companies and how to improve
gender and race ratios.Google Inc
said in June that 21 percent of tech hires last year were women,
boosting overall number of women in technical roles by 1 percent, as
part of efforts to increase diversity.