Every March, Redfin publishes a diversity report summarizing changes in our workforce over the previous year. In 2022, the percentage of overall employees who are people of color decreased from 38% to 36%, while the percentage of managers who are people of color increased from 28% to 30%. Over time, we expect a company of Redfin’s size to reflect our customers, if not society at large: 42% of Americans are people of color. The table below shows how the composition of our employees has changed, as of December 31 in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The Percentage of Employees Who Were People of Color, 2020 – 2022
| People of Color | Black | Latino | Asian | |||||||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Field | 32% | 35% | 33% | 9% | 10% | 9% | 11% | 12% | 12% | 7% | 7% | 7% |
| Business | 34% | 41% | 41% | 6% | 11% | 10% | 6% | 7% | 8% | 16% | 16% | 17% |
| Tech | 55% | 62% | 54% | 5% | 5% | 4% | 5% | 4% | 6% | 40% | 47% | 39% |
| Redfin | 34% | 38% | 36% | 9% | 10% | 9% | 10% | 11% | 11% | 10% | 12% | 11% |
| NAR | 20% | 23% | 23% | 6% | 7% | 8% | 9% | 10% | 11% | 4% | 5% | 5% |
| Census | 42% | 42% | — | 12% | 12% | — | 19% | 19% | — | 6% | 6% | — |
Diversity Data From Redfin’s Core Business
This data on the racial and ethnic diversity of our employees includes employees of Redfin’s core business, but not Bay Equity, the lender we acquired in April 2022, or Rent, the rentals marketplace we acquired in April 2021. The systems of both acquired companies are still separate from the rest of Redfin, complicating efforts to report more broadly on diversity in a consistent way; each of the three companies has its own CEO and its own diversity programs. If and when the acquired companies use the systems and programs from Redfin’s core business, our diversity report will account for those companies too.
Layoffs Limited Diversity Gains
For the last two years, the diversity of employees in Redfin’s core business had increased, but what made an overall increase unlikely in 2022 were two major layoffs. We had mostly stopped hiring by May 2022. The diversity program that seems to have had the best results has been slating. When recruiting, we aim to have at least one racially or ethnically diverse candidate for a role complete a full interview loop. This program couldn’t make much of a difference once hiring slowed in 2022.
Ensuring Layoffs Were Fair
With less hiring, the only points of rapid change in our workforce were at our June and November layoffs. We took great pains with both rounds of layoffs to ensure that the process was fair and that we selected the employees for layoff based only on performance criteria and business need.
Our Best New 2022 Program: Leadership Development
As the housing market recovers and Redfin returns to growth, we’ll want to promote or hire managers of color in proportion to their representation among all employees, a front on which we made progress in 2022. To sustain that progress, in the fall of 2022 we launched a series of interactive classes offered to 23 high-performing leaders, on the topics executives need to master: candid communications, financial statements, data analysis, project management, public speaking and writing. Fifty two percent of the students were people of color; the teachers were Redfin execs, with coaching from the HR team. The classes were a huge hit, and is now being expanded to wider audiences.
Asian Representation in Tech
Before we turn to the data on the diversity of our managers, we should also note that the other change driving down representation of people of color among the overall employee population was a decline in the percentage of Asians in technology roles. We want to make sure that Redfin’s technology team hasn’t become less welcoming to Asian employees over the last year, but compared to the census, the proportion of people who identify as Asian on our technology team has been and still is higher than in the U.S. census. For this reason, our tech team has been more focused on hiring and retaining Black and Latino employees.
Manager Diversity
The most encouraging trend is the increasing number of people of color in management positions, especially among Black field managers, which jumped from 8% in 2021 to 10% in 2022.
The Percentage of Managers Who Were People of Color, 2020 – 2022
| People of Color | Black | Latino | Asian | |||||||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Field | 25% | 24% | 28% | 7% | 8% | 10% | 8% | 8% | 9% | 4% | 4% | 4% |
| Business | 24% | 27% | 33% | 4% | 6% | 7% | 1% | 2% | 5% | 14% | 17% | 16% |
| Tech | 38% | 46% | 38% | 3% | 2% | 4% | 2% | 4% | 6% | 28% | 35% | 24% |
| Redfin | 26% | 28% | 30% | 6% | 7% | 9% | 6% | 7% | 8% | 9% | 10% | 9% |
Asian Managers in Tech
Among our technology team, the drop in Asian managers was even steeper than the decline among Asian employees overall; one factor may have been the increasing proportion of management hires and promotions made in late 2021 and early 2022 outside of two cities with large Asian populations, Seattle and San Francisco. What’s especially important for us to understand better is why 39% of all tech employees are Asian but only 24% of managers are; we want to make sure we’re developing leaders from all backgrounds, and appreciating different leadership styles at Redfin.
An Industry Led by Women
And lastly, we should address the proportion of employees who are women; in line with the real estate industry, most of our employees are women. Most of our managers are also women. Thirty-four percent of our technical staff are women, roughly in line with the percentage who are managers. The technical teams of the industry giants are often less than 25% women. We still have more work to do to ensure women’s representation in management, especially at the exec level, is similar to women’s overall representation at the company, but we’re also glad to have narrowed that gap in 2022, on the strength of a three-point jump in women managers, from 51% to 54%.
| All Employees | Managers | |||||
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
| Field | 62% | 61% | 65% | 54% | 54% | 58% |
| Business | 58% | 59% | 63% | 50% | 54% | 56% |
| Tech | 37% | 37% | 34% | 25% | 33% | 32% |
| Redfin | 60% | 59% | 62% | 50% | 51% | 54% |
| NAR | 64% | 65% | 66% | |||
How Society Views our Efforts
Corporate diversity initiatives have come under fire over the last year, as the whole idea of treating employees fairly became politically charged. Some argued that our only priority in a sharp housing downturn should be profits. We have long said that diversity will never be our only priority, but it will always be one of our top priorities. This is why revenues and profits determined 90% of 2022 executive bonuses, and the representation of people of color determined the final 10%. Leaders of our brokerage and support organization achieved 75% of the 2022 diversity target, whereas headquarters execs got 135% of that target.
Diversity as a Foundation for Long-Term Profits, Better Service
But the reason diversity is even a target at all is driven by profit, not politics or altruism. A diverse, fair workplace is an end in itself, but it’s also how we can make the most money over time: by elevating talent that may have been stymied elsewhere, by reaching customers that other brokerages don’t, by drawing in a wider range of ideas and management styles. These goals may seem like wishful thinking but what’s real is how diverse some of our most profitable markets are, and how palpable their energy is. And since what we’re selling determines where kids go to school and who amasses wealth, in an industry that for decades participated in the segregation of U.S. neighborhoods, everyone in real estate has a special obligation to welcome all home-buying customers. Redfin can do this well only with a diverse workforce.
1. People of color include people who are American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian , Native Hawaiian or other Pacific islanders, and people of two or more races.
2. Tech includes engineers, product managers, designers, user researchers and analysts.
3. The National Association of Realtors publishes data on the diversity of its dues-paying members, which is useful as a point of comparison to our field organization.
4. The U.S. census publishes data each year on the diversity of America at large, which is useful as a point of comparison to our overall workforce. Data for 2022 was not yet available when we published this report.
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