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We all love factoids-right? So if you are heading out to a New Year’s Eve Party this weekend and need a few icebreakers to get the conversation going, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has come to the rescue.
The EEOC recently provided a brief review of its fiscal year which ended September 30. Feel free to use any of the highlighted stats below:
- 91,503 charges were received by the EEOC this fiscal year and 97, 443 were resolved;
- pending EEOC charges were reduced by 3.8 percent to 73,508, which is the lowest pending charge workload in the last three years;
- 15,800 charges were settled by the EEOC pre-litigation;
- The EEOC filed 86 lawsuits alleging discrimination (58 involved individual suits and 29 involved multiple victims or discriminatory policies)––the number of suits filed is lower than in prior years;
- The EEOC ended the year with 165 cases that it was still actively prosecuting (of which 47 (28.5 percent) involve challenges to systemic discrimination and an additional 32 (19.4 percent) are multiple-victim cases)––the number of suits pending is also lower than in prior years;
- The EEOC secured more than $482 million for victims of discrimination in private, state and local government, and federal workplaces (It took the EEOC’s annual budget of over $364 million to do this.);
- $82 million dollars that was secured went to federal employees and applicants who claimed discrimination by the U.S. Government; and
- The EEOC launched four digital services, including the EEOC’s Respondent Portal, which allows employers to receive digital notices of charges and to submit online responses. Additionally, members of the public can now make online requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”).
Tossing out these statistics should make you the talk of the party this year!
If you are a true EEOC geek and would like more information about what the EEOC is up to, check out the EEOC’s Fiscal Year 2017 Congressional Budget Justification. The charts are impressive and chock full of information.
The EEOC has also updated and approved its “Strategic Enforcement Plan” for Fiscal Years 2017-2021, which blueprints the agency’s work for the next five years.
This review was provided in addition to the EEOC’s “Performance and Accountability Report” (the “Report”) released a few weeks ago. The Report serves as a type of report card for the EEOC to assess whether it has met the performance goals outlined in the 2012 Strategic Enforcement Plan. It is clear from the review and the Report that the EEOC plans to continue to pursue “systemic” cases, including “pattern” cases where the alleged discrimination “has a broad impact on an industry, occupation, business, or geographic area.”
