EEOC Proposes Changes to EEO-1 Reporting to Include Pay Data

By Martha J. Zackin

Today, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a proposed revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to include the annual collection and reporting of pay data.  Currently, federal law requires federal contractors with 50 or more employees, and all other employers with 100 or more employees, to file an annual EEO-1 report, which reports employees’ ethnicity, race, and sex by job category.  The revised EEO-1 would require all employers with 100 or more employees to continue to collect and report this demographic data and, in addition, pay data.  Federal contractors with between 50 and 99 employees would not be required to report pay data, but would continue to report ethnicity, race, and sex.

According to the press release published announcing this new requirement, the data collected will be used by both the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) “to assess complaints of discrimination, focus agency investigations, and identify existing pay disparities that may warrant further examination.”  In addition, as described in an EEOC- published “Questions and Answer” document, the data will be aggregated and published, to “help employers evaluate their own pay practices to prevent pay discrimination in their workplaces.”

A “Small Business Fact Sheet” provides a detailed description of the data that would be collected if the proposal becomes law.  In summary, using W-2 wage data employers would tally and report the number of employees within each EEO-1 job category whose W-2 pay for twelve months was in one of twelve “pay bands.”  These pay bands, which would track the twelve pay bands used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Occupation Employment Statistics survey, are:

    1. $19,239 and under;
    2. $19,240 – $24,439;
    3. $24,440 – $30,679;
    4. $30,680 – $38,999;
    5. $39,000 – $49,919;
    6. $49,920 – $62,919;
    7. $62,920 – $80,079;
    8. $80,080 – $101,919;
    9. $101,920 – $128,959;
    10. $128,960 – $163,799;
    11. $163,800 – $207,999; and
    12. $208,000 and over.

In addition to reporting (by ethnicity, race and sex) the number of employees whose total W-2 pay fell into each pay band, employers would also tally and report the total number of hours worked by the employees counted in each pay band over the prior twelve months. This would accounts for part-time or partial-year employment.

Members of the public may submit comments through April 1, 2016.  Barring revision or withdrawal of the proposal, employers will be required to comply with the new EEO-1 obligations by submit ting pay data as of the September 30, 2017 EEO-1 filing deadline.

The EEOC also The proposed revised EEO-1 may be viewed here.