Philadelphia ranks third best city for diversity in STEM

Philadelphia is the third best city in the country for diversity in STEM careers, according to a ranking by financial technology company SmartAsset. 

Of the total 38,000 STEM workers in the city, 57% identify as white and two-thirds are male, according to the data from SmartAsset. They also report that a little over 15% identify as Black, about 17% identify as Asian, and about 9% identify as Hispanic or Latino. Philadelphia was topped by Oakland, California and Boston, Massachusetts.

Philadelphia has consistently placed in the top five cities in each edition of the study SmartAsset has put out in recent years. This year's ranking, however, is a drop from 2019, in which SmartAsset ranked Philadelphia as the second-best city on the list, behind only Washington, D.C. 

Philadelphia has slightly increased its diversity in STEM since last year’s report. SmartAsset estimated in 2019 that 58% of STEM workers in Philadelphia identified as white.

The city has decreased its gender diversity in STEM since the previous year. According to last year's report, 37% of STEM workers in the city were female, which decreased to approximately 33% this year

Philadelphia’s data is similar to that of most other cities. SmartAsset reported that out of the thirty-five cities on the list, only ten had a STEM workforce that was less than 50% white, and none had a workforce that was less than 60% male.

There have been recent efforts to improve diversity in Philadelphia’s STEM workforce. In August, sixty organizations funded an initiative to supply ten-million dollars to Philadelphia schools over the next ten years in an effort to get more female, Black, and Latino and Hispanic students involved in STEM. The money will contribute to both in-school and extracurricular programs.