The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Summary
Congress funded the EEOC at $435,382,000 for fiscal year 2026 -- about $1.27 per U.S. resident. Its 1,803 full-time employees oversaw 88,201 new discrimination charges and 90,743 resolutions in FY2025, the agency's last full year of workload data.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
In fiscal year 2025, EEOC's private-sector program received 88,201 discrimination charges and resolved 90,743, cutting into its backlog. Its federal-sector hearings program, which adjudicates federal employees' complaints, received 7,175 hearing requests and resolved 6,178. Its mediation program held 11,346 mediations, resolved 7,929 charges -- a 70 percent success rate -- and delivered almost $245.3 million in benefits to workers without a full investigation, and its systemic program, targeting discrimination patterns spanning an employer or industry, resolved 444 investigations for $55 million in benefits to 1,823 workers.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $435,382,000 for EEOC's fiscal year 2026 budget, down from FY2025's $455 million, funding 1,803 full-time employees, down from 2,027. Divided across the 341.8 million U.S. residents⧉ the Census Bureau counted as of July 2025, that works out to about $1.27 per resident -- funding private-sector investigation and litigation ($334.9M), federal-sector hearings and appeals ($64.5M), state/local/tribal fair-employment payments ($30M), and outreach ($6M).
View data as table
| Charge Investigation & Resolution | 228,185 | private-sector charges |
|---|---|---|
| Litigation | 80,833 | private-sector court cases |
| Federal Sector Enforcement | 64,524 | hearings, appeals, oversight for federal employees |
| State, Local & Tribal | 30,000 | FEPA/TERO payments |
| Mediation | 25,840 | private-sector ADR |
| Outreach | 6,000 | non-fee-based education |
Why is it good for society?
Every discrimination law EEOC enforces except the Equal Pay Act requires filing a charge with the agency before suing an employer in federal court -- EEOC is the mandatory first stop, not an optional one. Its mediation program resolves most of what it touches before that gate closes: 70 percent of FY2025 mediations settled, delivering $245.3 million directly to workers without a full investigation or a federal lawsuit's cost and delay.
- EEOC's FY2026 appropriation ($435.4M) works out to about $1.27 per U.S. resident, funding a workforce (1,803 ) that is down 224 from FY2025's 2,027 -- even as private-sector charge receipts (88,201) held roughly flat.
- FY2025's 90,743 private-sector resolutions works out to about 50 charges resolved per FY2026 agency-wide -- a rough workload-intensity measure, not a literal per-employee caseload, since includes federal-sector, mediation and support staff too.
Your handles.* File a Charge of Discrimination if you believe you were discriminated against at work. Track an open charge via the EEOC Public Portal. Comment on a proposed EEOC rule via the Federal Register's EEOC page.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc.gov), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (1964-07-02) — EEOC's own hosted reproduction of Title VII's statutory text (42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq.), including Section 705's language creating the Commission. The U.S. Code is the authoritative codification; this is the agency's own operative copy and the source for this entry's founding/structure paragraph. Wayback's Save Page Now returned HTTP 520 (confirmed systemic outage this session, tested directly on two other eeoc.gov URLs below); archiveUrl is recorded null and is non-blocking per project directive (one probe, skip further attempts once the outage reads as systemic). eeoc.gov
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc.gov), EEOC History: 1964 - 1969 (2009-01-01) — EEOC's own official historical account of its 1964-1969 founding period -- the source for this entry's five-member/bipartisan commission structure and its July 2, 1965 opening date. Wayback's Save Page Now returned HTTP 520 (confirmed systemic outage this session); archiveUrl recorded null, non-blocking. eeoc.gov
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Fiscal Year 2027 Congressional Budget Justification -- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2026-04-03) — EEOC's own congressional budget justification, filed with its FY2027 budget request. Table 1 (Total Agency Funding Profile) and Table 2 (Budget Request Summary for Strategic Application of Law Enforcement Authorities) report FY2026 ENACTED budget authority ($435,382,000) and staffing (1,803 ) alongside FY2025 actuals and the FY2027 request -- the standard federal CBJ format, whose historical/enacted-year columns report actuals and enacted levels, not projections. Tables 5, 8, 9 and the narrative Mediation Program and Systemic Program sections (pp. 18-23) supply this entry's FY2025 workload figures. Direct eeoc.gov fetch succeeded (no 403 hazard observed for this domain); Wayback's Save Page Now returned HTTP 520 on this document specifically (confirmed outage, one probe per project directive); archiveUrl recorded null, non-blocking. PDF retrieved and parsed locally (pdftotext) to confirm exact table figures against the live document. eeoc.gov
- U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc.gov), Filing a Lawsuit (2024-01-01) — EEOC's own public guidance page stating that every discrimination law it enforces, except the Equal Pay Act, requires filing an EEOC charge before an employee may sue an employer in federal court -- the source for this entry's mechanism paragraph (§4). Wayback's Save Page Now returned HTTP 520 (confirmed systemic outage this session); archiveUrl recorded null, non-blocking. eeoc.gov
- U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration (Vintage 2025 national population estimate) (2026-01-27) — The Census Bureau's own Vintage 2025 national population estimate release, giving the U.S. resident population as of July 1, 2025 -- the per-resident denominator for this entry's cost-per-person KPI, per better_metrics.md's sourced-denominator discipline. Same source already sealed and independently verified for this series' NLRB, and USITC entries; reused here rather than re-sealed since it is the same fixed population estimate. census.gov press URLs are a known 403-on-direct-fetch hazard; this is the already-sealed capture from an earlier entry. census.gov · original document
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Congress created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed July 2, 1964 -- a five-member, bipartisan commission, no more than three from one political party, appointed by the President to five-year terms and confirmed by the Senate. The EEOC opened for business July 2, 1965, an independent federal agency headquartered at 131 M Street NE in Washington, D.C.