Our commitment to building an NPR that reflects, serves, and inspires America begins with our people. We have committed ourselves to creating a diverse workplace where staff can grow and thrive.
We are committed to equity and inclusion in our workplace. That means we will work tirelessly to uphold the value of fairness throughout the organization and aspire to tap the full talents of our staff in all that we do. We recognize that, across the organization, there are visible and invisible privileges and barriers to success, and we are committed to breaking down all systemic barriers to equity and inclusion. We will create and sustain a culture that supports all who work here.
We have much to achieve.
Commitment to Transparency and Accountability
In order to properly do this work, we need to measure our progress. We need to talk about where we are succeeding, and where we are failing. Every year, we will update this page to reflect the most current data on our staff diversity. We are building accountability and transparency in all this, in service to our staff and our audiences.
Diversity is not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity to be realized. Reflecting America in staff and leadership can only make NPR more successful over time.
Staff Diversity Statistics and Breakdown - 2024
We measure our representation on two main dimensions — race and ethnicity, and gender identity — and are working on including other distinctions in future iterations of this report.
While NPR historically has tracked representation of male and female employees only, we have recently begun allowing staff to self-identify from the broader spectrum of gender identity, including multiple identities. Once enough staff have voluntarily responded, our staff diversity data will more accurately reflect the gender identities of the people at NPR.
For race and ethnicity, NPR has followed the reporting guidelines set by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for EEO-1 data collection, and that is reflected in our existing data. We are reevaluating our method of data tracking to be more inclusive.
In 2022, we added some information about disability.
There is an entire organization behind NPR's content, but most of our audiences first encounter NPR through the voices and names they hear — on-air from our newsmagazines and on-demand through our podcasts — and the bylines they read on npr.org. This editorial subset includes reporters, hosts, and correspondents.
Our growth in staff race/ethnicity representation over the past four years has been incremental.
NPR is focused on building employment practices that are fair and transparent, and providing support for supervisors and employees. We are doing this by training managers to be inclusive leaders, and building a climate in which people can grow and thrive through affinity groups (open to all NPR employees), training, mentorship, and events and programs that advance the dialogue in this area and increase a sense of belonging.
Our near-term priorities include strengthening metrics that measure representation in our content, workforce and hiring practices, expanding NPR's support for employee affinity groups (open to all NPR employees), continuing to perform periodic pay equity studies, supporting our mentorship programs, and conducting regular employee surveys and analyses of employee turnover to measure the inclusiveness of our workplace.
Copyright 2025 NPR
