« 50 Great Blogs For And By Law Professors | Main | Seattle to unveil new student assignment plan soon »
November 11, 2009
ADEA Complaints Decline By 7%
In a November 6, 2009 National Law Journal article, it is reported that ADEA lawsuits filed with the EEOC were down 7%. As the article states:
The EEOC said Friday that it is preparing to release statistics indicating that age discrimination complaints declined by 7% in 2009. That would contradict the expectations of most labor lawyers, given heavy job losses, and an earlier forecast by the agency itself.
"The facts are turning out different than people thought in terms of age discrimination charge numbers," said Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel to the EEOC. "What is sort of anecdotally appearing to people is not what we're seeing in the numbers."
A drop in age discrimination complaints would be in sharp contrast to the trend in 2008, which saw a 30% rise in age discrimination charges compared to 2007 — from 19,103 complaints to 24,582.
I am quite surprised by this. In hard economic times, where people are out of work I would have expected these numbers to be increasing! Not decreasing!. This is particularly with respect to older workers who find it more difficult to find employment. I wonder why these numbers have decreased.
Mitchell H. Rubinstein
November 11, 2009 in Employment Discrimination | Permalink
Comments
Older workers might be less likely to feel that their employers have engaged in age discrimination when these workers see they are among many laid-off employers. Additionally, these older workers might not be certain enough of their chances of success in a lawsuit to retain the services of an attorney, or realize that there are plenty of unemployed attorneys for them to retain.
Posted by: Sujan Vasavada | Nov 11, 2009 8:38:19 AM
