More U.S. employees complaining of bias

When it comes to preventing discrimination among your workforce, now is not the time to let down your guard!

That’s your takeaway from statistics recently released by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency with primary responsibility for enforcing workplace discrimination laws.

According to the EEOC, there was a whopping 20% increase in the number of bias charges received by the agency last year compared with the prior year. The agency said there were 73,485 discrimination complaints submitted by U.S. workers in 2022, which was 20% more than the 61,331 charges filed in 2021.

As additional proof that more people are complaining of discrimination, the EEOC said it received 475,000 phone calls to its contact center in 2022, which was a 24% increase from the 383,500 calls received in 2021. And the agency handled 68,700 emails in 2022, which was a 32% jump from the 52,000 emails it handled in 2021.

And once the EEOC receives a bias complaint, organizations usually have to pay up. For instance, the agency collected more than $513.7 million from U.S. employers in 2022 to pay 33,298 victims of workplace discrimination.

(From the May 12, 2023, issue of HR Managers Legal Alert for Supervisors. To start your no-obligation trial subscription to the publication right now, please click here.)