Central Valley Workplace Discrimination and Harassment Statistics

The six largest Central Valley counties have a combined labor force of 1,832,307 and recorded 1,122 complaints of all kinds in 2024. Fresno led with 301, then Kern with 276 and San Joaquin with 230. Fresno's rate of 52.7 employment filings per 100,000 workers and Kern's 58.7 are both far below the statewide 71.8.

The complaint counts, 2022 to 2024

The gap between the Valley and the coast is the largest in the state. Tulare County, with 211,169 workers, recorded 111 complaints in 2024, a rate of 48.3 per 100,000, and Merced 61. Agriculture, food processing, warehousing and a large immigrant workforce mean that the people most exposed to harassment and wage retaliation are the least likely to file, and the region has few employment lawyers. California law protects farmworkers and undocumented workers exactly as it protects everyone else, and threats about immigration status in response to a complaint are unlawful retaliation. The Valley numbers should be read as under counts.

How to read the county tables. CRD records the county where each complaint arose, and its Appendix C counts complaints of every kind by county: employment complaints accepted for investigation, employment complaints filed for a right to sue, housing complaints, and smaller categories under the Unruh Act, the Ralph Act and other statutes, which are in the total but not shown separately here. The county tables cover complaints with a county recorded, which is fewer than the statewide totals, so the sum of the counties is lower than the statewide figures on our CRD by year page. Rates divide the 2024 employment filings (investigated plus right to sue) by the county labor force.

What the statewide tables add

CRD does not publish complaint bases by county, so the mix of claims in the Central Valley has to be read from the statewide basis tables. Across California in 2024, disability was the most cited basis in right to sue complaints (14,430), followed by retaliation for reporting or resisting discrimination (11,837), sex or gender (9,131), family leave (8,340), requests for disability accommodation (8,288) and race (7,655). A sexually hostile work environment was alleged in 6,787 complaints. There is no reason to think the Central Valley departs much from that mix.

The federal side adds a statewide figure only: 4,750 EEOC charges from California in fiscal 2025, 62 percent of them alleging retaliation. The EEOC does not publish county counts.

What these numbers mean if it happened to you

• The same state law applies in every county: three years to file with CRD, one year to sue after the notice, uncapped damages, employers of five or more covered for discrimination and all employers for harassment.
• Where you file in court is usually the county where you worked or where the employer does business, and local juries and local judges shape case values.
• A right to sue complaint from the Central Valley goes into the same statewide queue. Requesting it online takes minutes, but get advice before you start the one year clock.
• Employment filings per 100,000 workers are a rough measure of how often people in an area take action, not of how often they are wronged.

Sources

The figures on this page were taken from the following publications, as released by the agencies. Percentages, changes, sums and rates per 100,000 workers are our own arithmetic from those figures.

• California Civil Rights Department, 2024 Annual Report (complaint tables and county appendix), calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2023 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2022 Annual Report, calcivilrights.ca.gov
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, California and county labor force, latest month available in September 2026, www.bls.gov

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