WASHINGTON — The Biden White House employs the most diverse staff in U.S. history, according to a government report filed with Congress Friday and first obtained by NBC News, with nearly 50% of current appointees identifying as racially or ethnically diverse.
The White House has “taken significant steps” to ensure it represents the entire population, according to the report, delivering on a campaign promise from President Joe Biden.
The current White House staff is overwhelmingly female, with women making up about 59% of the staff. This exceeds the 50.5% of the national population who are women, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and the 47.2% of the workforce who are women, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The president’s directive to us is crystal clear: Make sure the Biden-Harris administration reflects America,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told NBC News in a statement. “We’ve made tremendous strides in getting there and we’ll continue to build on that progress.”
The latest figures from the staff report show more staff identifying as diverse, with 49% this year, up from 44% in 2022, according to the administration’s own analysis.
Among White House senior staff, about 48% are women, up from 56% last summer, and 34% are from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds, up from 38% a year ago.
Since 1995, each White House has been required to send a report to Congress detailing the title and salary of each official employee by July 1, before being publicly released.
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com