Despite efforts to improve their diversity, equity and inclusion, the country's largest businesses remain predominantly white and male, underscoring how much work remains yet to be done, according to a data analysis performed by Bloomberg.

Having obtained detailed breakdowns of U.S. employee counts by race and gender across job categories for 37 out of 100 of the nation’s biggest corporations, Bloomberg found that, in general, white people remain the biggest demographic at all levels, especially within management roles. Conversely, while there are much fewer people of color in these top companies in general, there were even fewer in professional and leadership roles. For instance, only four of the 37 companies had Black people in 10 percent or more of executive and management roles, despite Black people making up about 13 percent of the population. Asians did have a higher level of representation in professional roles than other non-white groups, but their proportions remained significantly below those of white people.

The whitest company in the Bloomberg data was office supply maker 3M, which had white people as 85.6 percent of its managers, 80.3 percent of its professionals, and 77.1 percent of its "other workers." The company with the lowest proportion of white people in high positions was Gilead, a biotech company, which had 49.8 percent of its management roles, 34.7 percent of its professional roles, and 52.7 percent of its other roles filled by white people.

Top companies also remained overwhelmingly male. Women, the data showed, lag significantly behind men in general when it comes to leadership and professional roles at these top companies; for white women alone, Starbucks was the company with the highest representation, 44.5 percent; the worst was Nvidia, a computer hardware maker, at 7.5 percent.

Women of color had it even worse. The number of leadership and professional roles filled by Black, Hispanic and Asian women was practically anemic in terms of representation. The company that had the most Black women in leadership roles was McDonalds, with an 8.5 percent proportion; the fast food chain was also the biggest source of leadership roles for Hispanic women as well, 16 percent. For Asian women, Gilead was the clear winner, at 19.1 percent, but it was an outlier compared to the next highest company, PayPal, which had 12.6 percent.

While the data are certainly not encouraging, Bloomberg said the fact that the companies even chose to share it at all represents a significant step, as typically businesses have been loathe to provide such demographic information.