There were zero references to the company’s diversity efforts in the 2025 report, compared to 12 references last year.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. โ Bank of America has removed references to “diversity” from its annual report, joining a growing number of major corporations scaling back language around diversity initiatives.
The Charlotte-based financial giant’s 2025 report contains zero mentions of diversity relating to employment initiatives, compared to 12 references to the company’s diversity efforts in last year’s report. Instead, the bank now frames its workplace initiatives around “Talent, Inclusion, and Opportunity,” and has replaced its “Diversity Metrics” table with a “Workforce data” table.
The bank’s previous language regarding efforts to hire a more diverse workforce is absent from this year’s report. The 2025 report was released on Tuesday.
Bank of America’s workforce data stayed mostly similar in both reports. Men and women each account 50% of the company’s employees, with 58% of the top management roles held by men — a 1% decrease from last year. People of color accounted for 51% of company employees and 27% of top-level managers in 2025, which matches the previous year’s mark.ย
The language change comes amid aย broader retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives by many corporations following conservative legal challenges and President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting such policies in both the federal government and private sector.
Many companies expanded DEI programs in 2020. Critics have argued that some programs discriminate by focusing on factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation.
While hiring decisions based solely on race or gender remain illegal under the Civil Rights Act, companies have typically described their diversity initiatives as aspirational efforts to widen candidate pools rather than quota systems.
Bank of America has not publicly commented on the specific reasons for the language changes in its annual report.
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