Obama team: 61% male, 48% white male

David Jackson | USA TODAY

A new survey says the Obama administration is probably making history: It has a minority of white males, 48%.

In another respect, however, the Obama team is very traditional -- it's mostly men.

The National Journal's latest Decision Makers survey says that 61% of the top officials in the Obama administration's second term are males, while 39% are females.

Obama's first term was 66% male, 34% female.

The U.S. population as a whole: 48% men, 52% women.

White males remain the largest group in the Obama administration at 48%, followed by white females (26%), blacks (13%), Hispanics (7%), and Asians (4%).

There are no gender breakdowns for blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

From National Journal:

"While President Obama has been criticized for not choosing a diverse enough cabinet for his second term, his extended administration just might be the most diverse of all time. Though, considering history, that might not be saying much. When National Journal conducted its Decision Makers survey in 2001, 59 percent of the top officials in the Bush Administration were white males.

"In the current survey of Decision Makers (a National Journal selection of 250 officials), just 48 percent were white males. This is down four percentage points from our 2009 survey (although that had a larger sample size, and our selection of Decision Makers isn't a random assortment). We don't have the data to prove it, but it's safe to say this is probably the first time white men are in the minority in high-ranking positions.

"Where white males lose footing in the second-term administration, white females, blacks, and Hispanics gain. Blacks in the Administration are approaching numbers representing the population at large. According to the Census Bureau, 13.6 percent of Americans are black. Thirteen percent of Obama's top decision makers are black as well. Women, however, are still underrepresented in respect to their portion of the population, as demonstrated in the chart below."