One of Mayor Kenney’s top priorities is to build a government that is as diverse as Philadelphia. He first showed his commitment to that goal when he appointed the City’s first-ever Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Following my appointment, the Mayor requested that each year, my office release a report summarizing the diversity of the City’s workforce. This year’s report is the first of these annual reports, and it is the first ever such report completed by the City of Philadelphia.
This report begins with a summary of the demographics of Philadelphia’s population, which the Mayor wants our government workforce to reflect. The report will then give an overview of the diversity of the entire workforce of the City, and then it will examine the diversity of the exempt workforce of the City.
The exempt workforce, the part of the workforce that is not required to pass the civil service examinations to acquire their positions, is the primary focus of this report. We made the decision not to examine the civil service workforce at this time because the City is awaiting the results of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ analysis of our hiring and promotional practices. The goal is to make this examination fair to everyone who wants to work in the City’s workforce or seeks a promotion. Additionally, though the City’s workforce extends to various other offices, such as the District Attorney’s Office and City Council, the primary focus of the report is limited to exempt positions in offices under the Mayor’s authority.
After a summary of the exempt workforce as a whole, the exempt workforce will be broken down further into categories like department heads, the executive exempt workforce, which is defined in this case as exempt employees who make over $90,000 per year, and finally by the Mayor’s Cabinet. The report then concludes with an overview of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s efforts this past year, as well as the next steps that we will take to build on this report.
The Office of Diversity and Inclusion believes that presenting factual data of the City of Philadelphia’s workforce is an essential step to bettering the diversity of the City workforce, and that through this work, we can continue our efforts to make the City’s workforce better represent the population of our City.