The U.S. airline industry still lacks diversity and continues to face issues boosting minority representation among its workforce. Projected hiring’s are not expected to improve the situation and the percentage of minority pilots is decreasing. Projections from a U.S. Department of Transportation report indicate that the airline industry will hire more than 317,000 employees by 2022, but the growth isn’t expected to improve the low representation of women and non-white men. Women continue to be unrepresented in the airline industry, accounting for just 34 percent of the workforce, compared with 47 percent in all U.S. industries combined. The lack of minority pilots has become a particularly significant problem. In 2012, U.S. Department of
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You do see occasional campaigns by some large U.S. airlines and hotel companies, especially in lobbying-heavy Washington, D.C., talking about their diversity hiring credentials and efforts. But beyond that, the travel industry at large remains unrepresentative of the larger demographic changes happening in America. If this is Obama’s America, we don’t see it in the travel industry. What’s clear is that Hispanics are making a dent on the lower end of the employment sectors in travel, purely because of their increasing numbers across the country. But African-Americans are stuck, and in some cases their employment numbers are actually …show more content…
And keep in mind; commercial pilots just starting out don’t get paid much. According to FAPA (Future and Active Pilot Advisers), first officers can start out as low as $20,000 per year. Needless to say, investing those same dollars and hours into other careers can often be much more lucrative, particularly up front. To get around the training cost, one essentially has to join the military, where once again we find a huge disparity in the desire to do so in Majorities vs. minorities. So not only do we have an issue of young minorities not dreaming of becoming pilots, but we also have significantly less minorities joining the military and becoming pilots there, and maybe making “commercial pilot” a future option for themselves, even if they didn’t think of it as an option as a child. While most none-white men also don’t see the military as an option they want to pursue, the small number that do and then become pilots there still eclipse the number of minorities doing
You do see occasional campaigns by some large U.S. airlines and hotel companies, especially in lobbying-heavy Washington, D.C., talking about their diversity hiring credentials and efforts. But beyond that, the travel industry at large remains unrepresentative of the larger demographic changes happening in America. If this is Obama’s America, we don’t see it in the travel industry. What’s clear is that Hispanics are making a dent on the lower end of the employment sectors in travel, purely because of their increasing numbers across the country. But African-Americans are stuck, and in some cases their employment numbers are actually …show more content…
And keep in mind; commercial pilots just starting out don’t get paid much. According to FAPA (Future and Active Pilot Advisers), first officers can start out as low as $20,000 per year. Needless to say, investing those same dollars and hours into other careers can often be much more lucrative, particularly up front. To get around the training cost, one essentially has to join the military, where once again we find a huge disparity in the desire to do so in Majorities vs. minorities. So not only do we have an issue of young minorities not dreaming of becoming pilots, but we also have significantly less minorities joining the military and becoming pilots there, and maybe making “commercial pilot” a future option for themselves, even if they didn’t think of it as an option as a child. While most none-white men also don’t see the military as an option they want to pursue, the small number that do and then become pilots there still eclipse the number of minorities doing