
A federal judge in Washington D.C. has lifted the stay of The U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB ) stay on pay data requirements for EEO-1 reporting.
The stay was lifted on March 4, 2019, putting employers in the awkward position to now have to report on pay data when submitting their EEO-1 reports for 2018 if the ruling stands.
Employers have a couple of extra months to comply with the new requirement to supply pay data for the first time in an EEO-1 report. The original March deadline for submitting EEO-1 reports for 2018 had already been extended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to May 31, 2019, because the federal government shutdown earlier this year had delayed the opening of the online portal for the EEO-1 Report until March. The EEOC will officially open the 2018 EEO-1 survey on March 18, 2019.
It’s unclear if the court decision, or a potential government appeal, will change any of the current deadlines. Given the late notice on reinstating pay data reporting, the EEOC may issue an additional deadline extension. Extension or not, employers need to prepare to collect pay data for the 2018 EEO-1 Report until further notice.
The requirement to submit pay data in EEO-1 snapshots in addition to data already reported was first issued during the Obama administration in 2016. OMB stayed the implementation of a new EEO-1 form that would include pay data while it conducted a review of the effectiveness of those aspects of the EEO-1 form that were revised on September 29, 2016.
In addition to pay data, employers will need to provide employees’ race, gender, EEO-1 job category, and physical location category based on a payroll period in October, November or December 2018. The payroll period is chosen by the employer as the basis for the information to be included in the report. Other fields, like the employee’s name, manager, and work location, are encouraged to be reported, but are not required. Employees who telecommute must be included in the EEO-1 reporting data for the work locations to which they report. Employers should not include home addresses for these employees.
The 2018 EEO-1 Report should be completed by private companies with 100 or more employees. Federal contractors and first-tier subcontractors with at least 50 employees and with at least $50,000 in contracts should file the EEO-1 Report, as should financial institutions and government depositories with 50 employees or more. Private employers with less than 100 employees may also be required to file if their association or common ownership with another company results in the joint entities having a total of collective total of 100 employees.
To determine if your company is required to file an EEO-1 Report, click here.
To learn more about achieving pay equity, click here.