Workplace Harassment Statistics for California, Every Kind, 2026

Harassment is unlawful in California whenever it is because of a protected characteristic: sex, race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, military status and several more. The agencies track a few of these separately. This page pulls together what is published.

Harassment charges by basis, the national series

The EEOC publishes one table for harassment of any kind and a second for harassment other than sexual harassment. The gap between them is sexual harassment. Race based harassment has its own table.

Two trends. Harassment charges overall fell through the pandemic year and then rose 76 percent from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2025. Race based harassment rose faster, 76 percent over the same four years, and now makes up 36.6 percent of all harassment charges.

The last time the EEOC broke harassment charges down by every basis was in its 2016 task force report, covering fiscal 2015. That year 45 percent of harassment charges alleged harassment because of sex, 34 percent race, 19 percent disability, 15 percent age, 13 percent national origin and 5 percent religion. The percentages add to more than 100 because many charges list more than one basis.

What California publishes

CRD does not publish a single harassment count. Its basis tables list sexual harassment (hostile environment and quid pro quo) as bases of their own, and fold harassment on other grounds into the underlying basis, so a racial harassment complaint is counted under race. What we can show for California is the sexual harassment line next to the bases that most often carry harassment allegations.

A note on how to read the CRD figures. The Civil Rights Department publishes its numbers by calendar year, and it counts a complaint under every basis it lists, so the basis rows add up to more than the number of complaints. Most California workers who go to court first ask CRD for an immediate right to sue notice rather than an investigation, so the right to sue table is the closer measure of how many people are actually pursuing a claim.

Who harasses, and what it costs the target

The 2024 national bullying survey, which measures abusive conduct whether or not it is tied to a protected trait, found that 32.3 percent of adult Americans report being bullied at work directly, that the bully is the boss in 55 percent of cases, and that 62 percent of targets end up losing their job one way or another. Those figures line up with what we see in harassment files: the person doing it usually has power over the target, and the target usually ends up gone.

The EEOC recovered 261.9 million dollars in fiscal 2025 for people who filed harassment charges, through settlements and conciliation alone. That is the highest figure in the series and up from 142.2 million in fiscal 2021.

What these numbers mean if it happened to you

Harassment is actionable in California when it is because of who you are, or because you reported something, and it does not need to be sexual. Racial slurs, mocking a disability, jokes about age or religion, or a supervisor making your life miserable after you complained are all harassment claims. California removed the old requirement that a plaintiff show a drop in productivity, and it says a single incident can be enough if it is severe.

• Employers of any size are liable for harassment under California law, the employer is strictly liable when the harasser is a supervisor, and the harasser is personally liable for their own conduct.
• Write it down each time it happens: date, words used, who saw it. Harassment cases are won on patterns.
• Harassment plus a firing or a cut in hours after you complained is two claims, and retaliation is now the most common allegation in California employment filings.

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.

• EEOC, Table E2a, charges alleging harassment, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E2c, Title VII sexual harassment charge receipts and resolutions, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E2d, charges alleging harassment other than sexual harassment, FY 2010 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E4g, race based harassment charge receipts and resolutions, FY 1992 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• EEOC, Table E1a, charge receipts by basis or statute, FY 1997 to FY 2025, www.eeoc.gov
• California Civil Rights Department, 2024 Annual Report (complaint tables and county appendix), calcivilrights.ca.gov
• EEOC, Select Task Force on the Study of Harassment in the Workplace, 2016 report, www.eeoc.gov
• Workplace Bullying Institute, 2024 U.S. Workplace Bullying Survey, workplacebullying.org

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