EEOC records the fewest charges of discrimination in over 20 years!

I knew that my training and day-to-day employer counseling were good. But damn!

Ok, it wasn’t so much me as it was a global pandemic, but either way, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission just reported its Fiscal Year 2020 stats, and the numbers are way down.

The EEOC received 67,448 charges of workplace discrimination the agency received in FY 2020. That may sound like a lot. But that’s a lot less than the 72,675 received in 2019. Or, go back to FY 2010, when the EEOC received 99,922 charges.

Scan the table for yourself, and you’ll see that 2020 marked the lowest charge totals in over 20 years. Plus, the EEOC resolved 70,804 charges in FY 2020. So, its total caseload dropped by nearly 4 percent.

Retaliation remains the most popular box checked on a charge of discrimination, as it always will. It’s often part of a larger claim of discrimination based on other protected classes.

Number two is disability discrimination. Thirty-six percent of the charges involved one of those claims, which marks the 12th year in a row that the percentage of disability discrimination claims has increased.

At the bottom of the list is genetic information discrimination. Yes, it’s a thing. But there were only 440 claims.

Overall, it was a good year for employers. At least in terms of not being accused of discriminating. We’ll take it.