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Psychology’s workforce is becoming more diverse

News on psychologists’ education and employment from APA's center for workforce studies

Date created: November 1, 2020

Vol. 51, No. 8
Print version: page 19

APA Style leaf logo Cite This Article in APA Style
American Psychological Association. (2020, November 1). Datapoint: Psychology’s workforce is becoming more diverse. Monitor on Psychology, 51(8). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/11/datapoint-diverse

More people of color are earning psychology degrees, a trend that is en­hancing the diversity of the psychology workforce. While overall most psychologists are still White (84%), in 2018 racial and ethnic minorities represented 26% of psychologists under age 36, compared with 8% of those over age 50.1

Graph depicting that in 2018 racial and ethnic minorities represented 26% of psychologists under age 36, compared with 8% of those over age 50.

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1 American Psychological Association. (2019). Demographics of the U.S. Psychology Workforce. https://www.apa.org/workforce/data-tools/demographics . Totals may not sum to 100 percent due to rounding. Age categories were not broken down to more specific groups due to the small sample sizes of racial- and ethnic-minority psychologists over age 50.

2 Due to small sample sizes, percentages for American Indian/Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and people of two or more races were combined. Based on data from the 2014–18 American Community Survey 5-Year PUMS file (U.S. Census Bureau), 0.14% of the psychology workforce were American Indian/Alaska Native, less than 0.1% were Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and 1.69% were people of two or more races.

3 American Psychological Association. (2019). Degrees in Psychology. www.apa.org/workforce/data-tools/degrees-psychology .

4 U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). American Community Survey 1-Year PUMS file. www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/data/pums.html

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