In this survey we document a systematic and persistent lack of female, Hispanic, and African American labor market participation in the innovation sector – through both entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists that fund them. In addition to documenting this empirical regularity, we explore its time-series evolution and cross-industry dynamics.

We show that this same pattern is not present across similar highly- 40 compensated, professional fields in such as medicine or law, nor in jobs with nearly identical human-capital profiles such as investment banking or consulting. We find that this empirical fact is not driven by a lack of supply of highly trained women, Hispanics, or African Americans. The representation of women, Hispanics, and African Americans in MBA programs as well as advanced science and engineering degrees has been substantially higher than their representation in the venture capital and entrepreneurial sectors for the past two decades.

We contrast this experience with that of Asians over the same time period. Asians started the time period with a much higher representation, compared to their percentage of the labor force, in the venture capital and entrepreneurial sector. That rate of participation increased dramatically as well over the past twenty-five years. This dramatic increase comes despite there being no dramatic increase in the fractions of MBA degree recipients or recipients of advanced science and engineering degrees who are Asian. Contrasting the experience of Asians with other ethnic minorities seems to be a fruitful area for future research. We also explore geographic concentration of this underrepresentation of female, Hispanic, and African American labor market participation.

Lastly, we examine the school- and prior work-based institutions out from which innovators and venture capitalists tend to emerge. The primary goal of this survey is to document the empirical regularities and relationships in the innovation labor market that will serve researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. We hope that the summaries serve as the beginning of more formal and structured research approaches to explore these human capital phenomena. Given the primary importance of labor as a factor of production in the innovation space, the strong regularities we document regarding female and minority labor market participation represent an important feature of real-world markets for which we need to understand the causes - and perhaps more importantly – the consequences. Future research should thus in particular focus on systematic and careful identification techniques in order to the move the discussion forward in a careful and positive direction.