Updated Chart: EEOC Charges versus Unemployment Rate

A few years back, I hypothesized that there would be a correlation between the number of EEOC charges and the unemployment rate. I made a pretty chart and there was a pretty strong correlation (.895). A reader asked for an updated chart, and who am I to deny the people what they want?

Here's the new chart:

Here's the data:

Year	EEOC Charges	Unemployment Rate
1997	80680	4.6
1998	79591	4.3
1999	77444	4
2000	79896	4.2
2001	80840	5.7
2002	84442	5.8
2003	81293	5.7
2004	79432	5.3
2005	75428	4.7
2006	75768	4.6
2007	82792	5
2008	95402	7.8
2009	93277	9.8
2010	99922	9.1
2011	99947	8.3
2012	99412	8
2013	93727	6.6
2014	88778	5.7
2015	89385	4.9
2016	91503	4.8

For the unemployment rate, I used the rate as of January  for the following year (e.g. as of January 2017 the rate was 4.8 so I used that as the rate for 2016). One could argue for something more nuanced (perhaps an average rate across the year?). Also, for EEOC charge statistics . . . we should presumably see some increase over time based solely on an increase in the population. Perhaps charting charges as a percentage of population? 

In any event, the correlation was not quite as strong after factoring in the past few years, but still clearly exists. One day I may dig a little deeper into the data.