NEW YORK (REUTERS) - Apple said it had hired over 11,000 women globally in the past year - 65 percent more than the previous year - to boost employee diversity.

"In the first six months of this year, nearly 50 per cent of the people we've hired in the United States are women, Black, Hispanic, or Native American," chief executive Tim Cook said in a message on the company's website.

Cook maintained there was "a lot" more work to be done.

Apple had 92,600 full-time employees as of September 2014.

Diversity reports in the recent past have spurred a national debate about the lack of diversity at Silicon Valley's tech companies and how to improve gender and race ratios.

Google said in June that 21 per cent of tech hires last year were women, boosting overall number of women in technical roles by 1 per cent, as part of efforts to increase diversity.