Portland city employees by demographic
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Portland has released its deepest dive yet into the nuanced demographics of city employees and found that by race and ethnicity, staff closely align with the demographics of Portland — at least among the nearly 60% who participated.
Why it matters: The voluntary extensive survey included a much wider variety of options for self-identification of race, ethnicity, language use, gender, sexual orientation and disability than the city has ever used before.
- The information will be used in part to evaluate Portland's progress on goals such as fairness in hiring and promotions.
Details: By race and ethnicity, the 4,538 employees who responded almost exactly align with the population of Portland, per 2020 census data. The largest gaps are among Latino or Hispanic and Asian or Asian American employees.
- Employees identifying as Latino or Hispanic make up 8.9% of the city workforce but 11.1% of Portland's population.
- Just over 7% of the city workforce identifies as Asian or Asian American, compared with 8% of the population.
Separately, 16% of respondents identified as LGBTQIA+ which is "pretty on par" with community demographics, executive director of Pride Northwest Debra Porta tells Axios. "That's kind of impressive."
The intrigue: The numbers shift when including demographic information on file for the more than 3,000 city workers who didn't participate but whose information is typically collected when they apply for or start a job.
- For example, 21% of those who responded to the new nuanced survey said they have experienced a disability, while just 10% in the combined data said they had a disability.
- Of note: In the combined data, a much higher percentage declined to answer the question.
The big picture: Among city bureaus, police, fire and parks had the lowest participation rates — between 38% and 40%.
- All other bureaus had at least 50% participation, and more than half had over 75%.
What they're saying: The new survey data "is going to be a baseline," Bureau of Human Resources spokesperson Carrie Belding tells Axios, and the bureau will keep trying to get employees to participate.
- But until participation is higher, she says, the combined data will be used to evaluate equity goals as well.
Meanwhile, Porta tells Axios she'd like to see more data on who holds management roles.
What's next: Portland plans a similar deep survey of workforce demographics every five years.