Companies across the country are eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion jobs, despite a push to create and fill them around the time of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota five years ago.
A set of data based on DEI employees’ social media suggests that those losses appear to be happening at slightly higher rates in Colorado.
National Public Radio worked with New York-based research company Revelio Labs, self-described as “an industry leader in workforce intelligence,” to get an idea of the loss of DEI jobs across the country – something that cannot be calculated with perfect accuracy because of disclosure choices and other reasons. The perceived decline is often connected with the Trump administration’s unfavorable views on DEI.
CPR News wanted to find out how Colorado aligned with their national findings, and requested data that was Colorado-specific.
It turns out Colorado’s social media profiles suggest that the Mile High state is outpacing the nation in its loss of DEI positions, according to Revelio’s data, provided to Colorado Public Radio by Maria Aspan, who authored the NPR story, last week.
Reviliios looked at 6,025 companies with employees in Colorado, but not all of them are based in Colorado.
Their findings: “In 2023, there were 330 DEI roles based in Colorado, and that as of April 2025, that number has declined to 272, representing a decline of 17.5 percent – 1.35 times the decline since January [in the country] overall,” according to an email from chief economist at Revelio Labs, Lisa Simon.
She added that her findings indicate: “Since January 2023, there [have] been 173 DEI roles based in Colorado that have left their positions at their companies, signaling instability in this role, even if these positions were eventually backfilled.”
The data Revelio Labs gathered, as described in a story that aired on NPR on May 27, found that DEI-related jobs are shrinking nationwide, if social media profiles are any indication. Revelio Labs analyzed U.S. job positions, as reported in online professional profiles, from a set of 8.8 million profiles, according to NPR’s story.
For the purpose of the data findings, DEI roles were defined as those with titles containing keywords such as “DEI,” “diversity,” “equity,” “inclusion” and other related terms. The data, therefore, does not include people who have DEI roles without those words in their titles.
A graphic in the NPR story shows that in 2023, there were about 20,000 DEI jobs nationwide, and now there are about 17,500, per Revelio’s data. That’s about a 12.5 percent decline.
Simon said she and a team of three formed conclusions “leveraging Revelio Labs’ resume data from professional online profiles.” She said she does not think that surveying companies would have yielded the same results, as companies would not likely reveal that information, she said in an email.
“Revelio Labs essentially collects professional online profiles. . . we essentially collect data from sources such as LinkedIn ... we have hundreds of millions of professional online profile data that we have access to,” she wrote.
“We have a set of keywords that we use to look for DEI roles” listed in places such as LinkedIn profiles, she said, adding: “This is anything to do with the actual keyword, DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion, and any sort of combination thereof, including also a few newer ways of calling these roles.”
Among the limitations of their findings is that not everyone uses social media, and those who do might not immediately update them with new roles, so the findings can only be considered indicative of possible trends, rather than scientific evidence thereof.
Nonetheless, according to Simon, social media profiles often function as resumes or CVs, “and we're able to see from when someone was in a particular job ... we can see inward and outward transitions from companies and roles – this is how we put this together.”
Revelios Labs indicated that one Denver-area company topped Colorado’s list of DEI losses: Danone, a food company once based in Broomfield that, since COVID, relocated to Louisville after people began working from home and less space was needed.
According to Revelios Labs’ findings, Danone started out with 20 DEI positions in 2023 and lost all but one of them by April 2025, one of the biggest drops statewide.
“This data is definitely not correct for our U.S. business,” according to Gemma Hart, a Danone spokesperson who was reached by phone and email. “We have a team of 3 people in the U.S. who lead and deliver our Opportunity and Belonging work, and help to create an inclusive environment, and that headcount has not changed over the past several years.”
Several Colorado companies in the top 20 of the data set were also contacted, but did not respond.
| This story is part of a collection tracking the impacts of President Donald Trump’s second administration on the lives of everyday Coloradans. Since taking office, Trump has overhauled nearly every aspect of the federal government; journalists from CPR News, KRCC and Denverite are staying on top of what that means for you. Read more here. |
