Gender diversity in private equity hiring took a step backward this year, while the hiring of Black Americans remained at very low levels.
That was the upshot of this year’s PE Diversitometer, an annual hiring benchmark that Private Equity Career News has produced since 2021. The results come almost a year after President Donald J. Trump ushered in an era of federal hostility to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in both government and private settings.
To be sure, the results for 2025 don’t differ dramatically from those in past years. Since 2021, the PE industry has hired roughly two men for every woman. This year’s percentage of female hiring, at 27 percent, while the lowest we’ve measured, remains in the same neighborhood. At the same time, the industry continues to hire very few Black Americans. The percentage this year remained at the 2 percent level found in 2024.
Diversity Drops: Still, advocates for diversity would see disturbing signs in this year’s PE Diversitometer, which is based on some 600 PE hires tracked largely in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The percentage of women hired at the senior level, for example, fell to 15 percent, down from the 27 percent to 30 percent levels measured the prior four years. It will be a few more years before we know if this is just an aberrational blip. As for diversity by race, in 2021, the benchmark’s first year, Black Americans made up 5 percent of hiring in PE. That was more than twice this year’s rate. Black Americans make up 13 percent of the labor force, according to recent data from the Department of Labor.
Related Research: The PE Diversitometer does not measure the percentage of female hiring by role. But other research does. A report released earlier this year by the Columbia Business School found that 22 percent of PE investment professionals were women in 2023, up from 20 percent in 2021. The study of 661 U.S. private equity firms also found that 6 percent of senior investment professionals were women in the 2021 to 2023 time period. That compared with 18 percent to 20 percent for mid-level roles and 25 percent to 27 percent at the junior level during the same period.
––Michelle “Moe” Saxton