Workplace Bullying Statistics, California 2026

Bullying is repeated abusive conduct: threats, humiliation, sabotage, screaming, isolation. It is measured by surveys, not by any agency, because it is not itself illegal in California or anywhere else in the United States. It becomes a legal claim when it is because of a protected characteristic, when it follows a complaint, or when it is severe enough to support a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. This page covers the survey data and the line.

What the 2024 survey found

The Workplace Bullying Institute's 2024 national survey reports that 32.3 percent of adult Americans have been bullied at work directly, which extrapolates to 52.2 million workers, and that another 22.6 million have witnessed it. The bully was the target's boss in 55 percent of cases and a peer of equal rank in 29 percent. Men and women are bullied at similar rates, 34 and 30 percent of respondents, and the most common pairing was a male bully and a male target. Targets have a 62 percent chance of losing their job afterward, through termination, transfer, constructive discharge or quitting, while the bully suffers consequences at less than half that rate.

The California numbers that come closest

Because bullying is only unlawful when it is tied to a protected trait or a complaint, the closest official counts are the hostile environment and retaliation lines in the state tables. In 2024 CRD recorded 6,787 right to sue complaints alleging a sexually hostile environment and 11,837 alleging retaliation for reporting or resisting discrimination. Harassment because of race, disability, age and other traits is counted under those bases. A bullied worker who cannot connect the conduct to any of these has no harassment claim, and many bullying stories that reach our office turn out, on questioning, to have such a connection.

What California law does about bullying

• Since 2015 California's mandatory harassment training has had to cover prevention of abusive conduct, and since 2019 that training is required at every employer with five or more employees, with abusive conduct defined as malicious conduct a reasonable person would find hostile or offensive and unrelated to the employer's legitimate business interests.
• That training law creates no right to sue for bullying alone. Several bills to create one have not passed.
• Bullying because of race, sex, disability, age, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity is harassment under the Fair Employment and Housing Act.
• Bullying that starts after a complaint, a leave request or a safety report is retaliation.
• Extreme conduct can support a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and injuries from workplace stress may be covered by workers' compensation.

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.

• Workplace Bullying Institute, 2024 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, workplacebullying.org
• California Civil Rights Department, 2024 Annual Report (complaint tables and county appendix), calcivilrights.ca.gov

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