How Many Workplace Discrimination Complaints Are Made Every Year?

Workplace discrimination is a problem in our job force every day. Whether it’s a product of ignorance, hatred, or both, it can cause extreme hardship on the victim. Workplace discrimination includes any action or decision made regarding an employee or coworker based on one or more protected class, including refusing to hire or promote, wrongful termination, workplace retaliation, bullying, and more.

What Are Protected Classes?

Title VII of the U.S. Constitution includes protections from workplace discrimination in both the government and private sectors. Those protected classes include race, sex, national origin, religion, age, and disability.

If a supervisor makes an employment decision about you, not necessarily a negative one, based on your inclusion in one of the aforementioned classes, it may constitute discrimination.

How Many Complaints Were Made Last Year?

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission releases a report at the beginning of every year which details the amount of discrimination-related complaints it received the previous year. The report also breaks the complaints down into percentages, so that we can see how many of each type of discrimination complaint was made. The EEOC just released its report for the fiscal year of 2015.

• Racial Discrimination – 31,027
• Sex Discrimination – 26,968
• Age Discrimination – 20,144
• National Origin Discrimination – 9,438
• Religious Discrimination – 3,502
• Disability Discrimination – 26,968

Of the numerous complaints listed above, 45 percent were related to a workplace retaliation charge. Retaliation has consistently been the most common discrimination charge. It actually saw an increase of 5 percent from the year before.

Unfortunately, as large as these numbers are, they only include those that came forward and filed complaints. Thousands more employees suffer through workplace discrimination every day.