EEOC Approves Revised EEO-1 Form – Requiring Employers to Annually Disclose Employee Pay Data

On September 29, 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced the finalization of its revised Employer Information Report (EEO-1), which requires all businesses with 100 or more workers to submit pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity. Approximately 60,000 employers and 63 million employees are expected to fall under the new reporting requirements. Employers and federal contractors subject to the EEO-1 filing will begin submitting their summary pay data based on W-2 wage information for the 2017 calendar year, with the new EEO-1 reports due March 31, 2018.

The final form approved by the EEOC is the same as that contained in the agency’s July 14 proposal sent to the Office of Management and Budget. See our client briefing, EEOC Publishes Revised Proposed Rule Requiring Disclosure of Compensation Data.

The current EEO-1 report collects data about employee race and gender according to 10 job categories. The new EEO-1 report includes two new data points: salary range and aggregate hours worked. The new form includes 12 salary ranges, or “pay bands.” For each of the 10 job categories, employers must tally the number of employees within each pay band by sex and race—employers will not report individual employee pay data. Employers must also report the aggregate number of hours worked by all employees in each pay band for each job category. Again, the hours worked data is reported only in the aggregate. As with pay data, employers will not report individual hours worked data.

The new rule also adjusts the “workforce snapshot period,” the period of time upon which the reported EEO-1 data is based. For the current EEO-1 report, employers report data based on the period from July 1 to September 30. For the new EEO-1 report, however, employers will report data based on a new period: October 1 to December 31. The new EEO-1 report also comes with a new reporting deadline of March 31. This means that filers will need to start using the new EEO-1 form beginning with the 2017 report, which will be due on March 31, 2018, and which will reflect “workforce snapshot period” of October 1 to December 31, 2017.

The reporting requirements for 2016 remain unchanged. These reports were due by September 30, 2016, using the current EEO-1 form and reflecting employee data for the period of July 1 to September 30, 2016.

Employers will have 18 months between the filing deadlines for the 2016 and 2017 EEO-1 reports – from September 30, 2016 to March 31, 2018 – to comply with and prepare for the new reporting requirements. Given the anticipated scrutiny by the EEOC on pay data obtained through the new EEO-1 reports, we recommend that covered employers assess and self-audit their pay practices well in advance of the reporting deadline.

You can also find more information about the revised EEO-1 report, including the new form and FAQ, at the EEOC website.