The conventional wisdom in a down economy is that employment discrimination claims will skyrocket. While there have been some indications of that at a national level, the numbers in Connecticut tell a very different story.

The state agency in Connecticut responsible for investigating discrimination complaints recently released its annual report (download here) for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010. 

It shows that 1740 employment discrimination complaints were filed in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, up slightly from 1716 complaints the year before (a little over 1 percent). However, these numbers are still well below the 1814 complaints filed in FY2008, and the over 2000 complaints in FY 2001. 

(I’ve previously looked at the annual report numbers in posts here, here and here.) 

Notably, the numbers of "reasonable cause" findings are down 15 percent from the year prior — to just 75 instances during the whole year (down from 91 in FY2009). It is the first time in 4 years, that the numbers of reasonable cause findings were this low. 

In upcoming posts I’ll delve into the numbers a bit further including increasing numbers of retaliation complaints being filed.

The numbers confirm what I had suspected last year — a discrimination complaint is not a foregone conclusion from a layoff, at least not in Connecticut.

Photo credit: Grafixar from morguefile.com