The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has published preliminary enforcement statistics covering Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 (October 1, 2019 – September 30, 2020). The statistics are contained in the EEOC’s recently issued annual Agency Financial Report (AFR), which must be submitted by federal agencies each year to the President and Congress.
The AFR reports that the EEOC received only 67,448 charge filings in FY 2020, a 7% reduction from FY 2019 and the lowest annual charge filing total in almost 30 years. To put this number into perspective, charge filings have been declining for several years. In FY 2019 (last year), there were 72,675 charges filed, following the recent high point of 91,503 charge filings recorded in FY 2016 – the last year of the Obama Administration. Prior to FY 2020, no annual charge filing total had been below 75,000, dating back to FY 1992’s 72,302 charges filed.
Members of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC) can read more here.