The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the EEOC,  has released its private sector data tables and a press release regarding enforcement data for fiscal year 2014. This data establishes that 42.8 percent of the 88,778 charges of workplace discrimination received by the agency alleged retaliation – an all-time high, despite there being an overall downtick in overall charge filing attributed to the government shutdown during the reporting period.

Through its enforcement efforts, and prior to litigation, the EEOC obtained more than $296 million in monetary relief, with more than $22 million in additional relief being obtained during litigation (including settlement amounts). The data and related press release further reflects a slight upswing in the number of lawsuits filed on the merits by the EEOC’s Office of General Counsel, with FY2014 seeing 133 such charges (two more than in FY2013). A closer look at the litigation data, however, reflects that lawsuits filed by the EEOC have trended downward significantly since FY2011, with FY2011 having seen 300 lawsuits filed overall (261 of which were merits suits) and FY2014 seeing only 167 suits overall (133 of which were merits suits).

The data tables offered by the EEOC are broken down by charge bases and offer state statistics to allow employers to consider trends in their area and can be a useful tool in trying to assess where the EEOC may be focusing its enforcement and litigation efforts.