Facebook's disappointing diversity report shows just how far Silicon Valley has left to go

For all its high-tech futuristic brilliance, sadly some things in Silicon Valley are way behind the times.

Several leading tech companies have started releasing data about their workforce in an effort to highlight diversity efforts but there's a lot of work to do.

Facebook published its statistics this week showing that just two per cent of employees are black and four per cent are Hispanic - a severe lag behind the demographic make up of the US, which is 16.3 per cent and 12.6 per cent respectively:

Although that's an improvement since last year, the Silicon Valley giant is not doing as well as companies like Apple, where 11 per cent of the workforce is of Hispanic descent and seven per cent are black - and even that isn't representative of the population.

In addition, only 32 per cent of Facebook employees are women.

In a blog post, Facebook’s global diversity director, Maxine Williams, said that the company was committed to widening their recruitment pool, including "harder-hitting" anti-bias training, trying to make sure hiring managers see at least one candidate from an underrepresented group for every job.

She added that they will be expanding the opportunities available to disadvantaged groups through their summer training programmes for undergraduate students.

More: Does Silicon Valley have a diversity problem? Data says yes