(Reuters) - Apple Inc (>> Apple Inc.) 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 6 months of this year, nearly 50 percent 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 Inc (>> Google Inc) said in June that 21 percent of tech hires last year were women, boosting overall number of women in technical roles by 1 percent, as part of efforts to increase diversity.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Stocks treated in this article : Apple Inc., Google Inc