EEOC Selects Additional Year of EEO-1 Pay Data for Submission 

Following the recent DC District Court decision ordering applicable employers turn over two years’ worth of worker pay data to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) as part of the annual EEO-1 survey, the EEOC today announced that it had chosen to collect data from calendar year 2017 in addition to 2018. These developments follow a March court order reinstating the previously revised Obama administration EEO-1 form’s pay data reporting requirements that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) halted in 2017. The EEO-1 is an annual survey that requires all private employers with 100 or more employees and federal government contractors or first-tier subcontractors with 50 or more employees and a federal contract, subcontract or purchase order amounting to $50,000 or more to file the EEO-1 report. The filing of the EEO-1 report is not voluntary and is required by federal law.

The traditional EEO-1 report (“Component 1”) requires employers to tally employment data by race/ethnicity, gender and job categories.  The reinstated “Component 2” of the report requires employers to query their databases for W-2 pay data and FLSA hours worked information, even though individual pay data is not actually reported to the EEOC.  The EEOC’s data processes currently are programmed to collect 140 data fields for Component 1, and the Component 2 data collection will require 3,360 data fields. Barring EEOC action or an appeal by the administration before the survey’s new deadline—September 30, 2019—filers should be prepared for the pay data requirements to be included in the survey.

AGC opposed the new data collection, calling upon the Trump administration and Congress to rescind the Obama administration Presidential Memorandum ordering the new EEO-1 form, and the form itself. AGC submitted comprehensive comments explaining its position to the EEOC in April and August 2016. Additionally, on April 3, 2019, AGC and other business groups filed a motion requesting status as an amicus to present information to the court about the concerns of the employer community that have been absent from the case.

 For more information, contact Claiborne Guy at claiborne.guy@agc.org or (703) 837-5382.