The word "minorities" carries a lot of weight in U.S. workforce reporting, and the meaning shifts depending on who's using it. Federal compliance forms use specific racial and ethnic categories with precise definitions. Affirmative action plans reference them as underutilized groups. Internal diversity reports often replace the term with more specific language. Public communications increasingly avoid it entirely. For HR teams navigating this landscape, the core task is knowing which terminology is required by law, which is preferred by the communities being described, and which is appropriate for each audience.
How Federal Reporting Defines Minority Categories The EEO-1 Report, filed annually by private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more, uses seven racial and ethnic categories. Hispanic or Latino (any race). Not Hispanic or Latino: White, Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. For aggregate analysis, employees in any category other than White (Not Hispanic or Latino) are typically counted as "minority."
OFCCP affirmative action plans for federal contractors use the same categories. Workforce availability analyses compare minority representation in the contractor's workforce to availability in the relevant labor market for each job group, and underutilization flags groups where actual representation falls below availability.
Terminology That's Moved Beyond "Minorities" Four alternative terms have gained ground in internal and public HR communications. "Underrepresented groups" or "underrepresented minorities" specifies the analytical concept (representation below availability or below some reference group) without making a statement about population share. "People of color" is widely used in U.S. public discourse, though it's imprecise for federal reporting purposes because it doesn't match any single EEO-1 category. "Historically marginalized communities" emphasizes the structural dimension of exclusion and is common in DEI strategy documents. Specific community names (Black employees, Latinx or Hispanic employees, Indigenous employees, Asian employees) are preferred in many contexts where precision matters.
None of these replacements is universally accepted. Different audiences prefer different terms, and preferences shift over time. The practical approach in HR communications is to default to specific, community-preferred terms in public and internal communications, and use the federal category names when filing required reports.
Why Are Asian Employees Sometimes Not Counted as "Minorities" in Corporate DEI Programs? Because specific Asian ethnicities are overrepresented in certain industries and occupations relative to their share of the U.S. population, some companies exclude Asian employees from underrepresented-group analyses in those specific contexts. This is statistically defensible in narrow circumstances (a specific job family at a specific employer where Asian representation exceeds availability) but it's often applied too broadly and misrepresents the significant underrepresentation of specific Asian subgroups (Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander) in leadership and high-wage roles. Precision matters.
Does "Minorities" Include Women? Not in federal reporting contexts. EEO-1 tracks sex and race as separate categories. Women are a protected class under Title VII but are not classified as a racial or ethnic minority in federal workforce reports. In affirmative action terminology, "minorities and women" is a combined phrase for two separate protected-class analyses.
How HR Teams Use Minority Representation Data Four analyses recur. Workforce representation by job level and function: where are representation gaps most pronounced, and how have they changed over time? Hiring funnel analysis: do representation rates at each stage of the funnel (applicant, interview, offer, hire) match what you'd expect given applicant-pool composition? Promotion and attrition analysis: are certain groups promoted or retained at lower rates? And compensation equity analysis: are there pay differentials that can't be explained by job, level, tenure, or performance?
Each of these analyses has to be done with statistical care. Small sample sizes produce noisy results. Intersectional analysis (e.g., Black women specifically, rather than Black employees and women separately) often surfaces patterns that single-axis analysis misses.
Using Terminology Appropriately in 2026 Workforce Communications Three practices work well in practice. Use federal category names (as they appear in EEO-1 instructions) for compliance documents, OFCCP filings, and mandated government reports. Use specific community-preferred terms in internal communications, employee resource group materials, and public diversity reports. Pair any terminology with clear data: headcount numbers, representation percentages, and benchmarks against relevant comparison groups, because vague language about "diverse workforces" without numbers increasingly fails to land with either employees or regulators.
Related concepts: affirmative action , adverse impact , inclusion , and discrimination . EEOC EEO-1 instructions and guidance are at eeoc.gov/employers/eeo-1-data-collection , and OFCCP's affirmative action resources are at dol.gov/agencies/ofccp .
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