Work Equity
The City of Roanoke is an Equal Opportunity Employer and works actively to recruit high-quality candidates from various backgrounds, educational institutions, and lived experiences. Our organization is working to identify and correct blind spots and oversights in our recruitment, hiring, onboarding, retention, and promotion processes so that the workforce of our local government accurately reflects our community in all areas of diversity.
Recruitment Opportunities
For current job openings and more information on our hiring process, please go to the Human Resources page.
The City's Inclusion and Language Services office has recently developed a Welcoming Employer Network program, providing technical assistance and support to businesses wanting to provide meaningful work and a living wage to our newly arrived immigrants and refugees.
Current Demographic Data
The chart below compares the demographic data for residents of the City of Roanoke ("Community") with the demographic data for City of Roanoke employees ("Organization.") As we progress in our efforts, our goal is for our workforce to match our community in all indicators of diversity and to be more thoughtful in our data collection and reporting. For more details, please see the 2022 Diversity Report.
| Community | Percentage | Organization | Percentage | % Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 98,865 | 100% | 1506 | 100% | |
| Male | 47,321 | 47.9% | 934 | 62% | +14.1% |
| Female | 51,544 | 52.1% | 572 | 38% | -14.1% |
| Asian or Pacific Islander | 3,955 | 3.9% | * | * | * |
| Black or African American | 32,625 | 32.6% | 256 | 17.6% | -15% |
| Hispanic or Latino | 6,921 | 7.1% | * | * | * |
| Other Race/More than One Race | 4,943 | 4.7% | 75 | 4.7% | 0 |
| White | 65,251 | 65.8% | 1175 | 77.8% | +12% |
*Currently, the City asks employees to self-identify race using the categories "White/Caucasian," "Black/African American," or "Other." We are consciously working to make our data collection more inclusive, but right now we can only provide the following estimates for these racial/ethnic categories based on data from 2/9/2023:
| Number of Employees | Percentage | |
|---|---|---|
| Asian or Pacific Islander | 17 | 1.1% |
| Hispanic or Latino | 37 | 2.5% |
| American Indian or Alaska Native | 5 | 0.3% |
| Other Race or More than One Race | 14 | 0.9% |