April 2023
EEOC Report Finds Public Sector Making Slow but Steady Progress on Discrimination
While government employers paid out more than $65 million to settle discrimination cases in fiscal year 2020, the total number of discrimination-related complaints against federal agencies has dropped over the last five years.
That’s according to the latest report on the federal workforce from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which finds the federal government making meaningful progress in terms of promoting equal employment opportunity (EEO), but some inequities still persist.
The EEOC’s Annual Report on the Federal Workforce “informs and advises the President and the Congress on the state of EEO throughout the federal government,” according to an EEOC statement, and “provides benchmarks against which individual federal agencies can gauge their performance.”
The report, which includes data from agencies that submitted and certified federal agency annual EEO program status reports, found that federal agencies paid $66 million in monetary benefits obtained through settlements and findings of discrimination at the complaint stage during fiscal year 2020. This number represents a 25% increase from fiscal year 2019. The total governmentwide pre-complaint settlement payout was around $3.6 million in fiscal year 2020, compared to $3.1 million in fiscal year 2019.
While these figures have risen in recent years, the total number of complaints filed with the EEOC seems to be headed in the opposite direction. In fiscal year 2018, for example, the organization received nearly 16,000 complaints. The number of complaints dropped to 14,138 in 2019, and 14,003 in fiscal year 2020, according to the EEOC report.
“We continue to see slow but steady progress in the federal sector with regard to key indicators of the EEEOC’s mission to prevent and remedy unlawful employment discrimination and advance equal opportunity for all,” said Carlton Hadden, director of the EEOC’s office of federal operations, in a statement.
Assessing Underlying Trends
This latest report marks “several major changes” to the EEOC’s annual report structure, according to the organization.
Previous reports from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2019 contained data on EEOC complaint processing activity, workforce statistics and EEO commitment in a single report, according to the EEOC.
For fiscal year 2020, the EEOC split the report into two parts, with one focusing on EEO complain processing activity and the other dedicated to workforce statistics and EEO commitment. The EEOC also added five years of workforce data to reveal long-term trends, revised the selected grade bands by which participation rates are reported and added information on missing data.
The first part of the latest annual report provides an overview of the underlying trends in federal sector complaint processing. The EEOC found that, among the 14,003 formal EEO complaints filed with the agency in 2020, reprisal (7,506) was the frequently alleged basis for discrimination claims, followed by age (4,221) and physical disability (4,214).
The second portion of the report showed that most, but not all, race/ethnicity by gender groups took part in the federal workforce at rates higher than they did in the civilian labor force (CLF).
Among groups with participation rates below the CLF, white women and men and women of two or more races saw decreases in their participation rates between fiscal year 2016 and fiscal year 2020, while Hispanic women’s and Latinas’ participation rate increased from 2.7% to 4.4% in that timeframe.
The participation rates of persons with disabilities (PWD) and persons with targeted disabilities (PWTD) continued to rise, according to the EEOC, which found the participation rate for PWDs to be 9.45%, and 1.84% for PWTDs.
“The federal government is the nation’s largest employer, with over 2 million employees, and the EEOC’s Annual Report on the Federal Workforce helps measure the federal government’s progress in promoting equal employment opportunity,” said EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows, in a statement.
“Although only a snapshot, this data helps indicate how federal agencies can enhance their ongoing efforts to make the federal government a model employer free from unlawful discrimination.”
03 April 2023
Category
HR News Article