Employers with at least 100 employees, and federal contractors with contract of at least $50,000 and 50 or more employees, are well aware of the EEO-1 report requirement. EEO-1 reports are due on March 31 of each year and include data on employee race/ethnicity and gender, called “Component 1” data.  Component 1 data is submitted through a web portal maintained by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and is used by the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to gauge compliance with federal equal opportunity laws. This year’s deadline was extended to May 31, 2019, a delay caused by the prior 35 day shutdown of the federal government over the budget.

The new wrinkle for employers is the requirement to submit “Component 2“ data. This requirement was established by the Obama administration and specifically called for employers to submit two years of information on compensation and hours worked from employee W-2 forms. The purpose of this requirement was to allow the administration to identify pay disparities across industries and occupations which would not otherwise be detectable by examining the Component 1 information. The Trump administration considered this new requirement to be too great a burden on employers and issued a stay on the requirement for Component 2 data. However, a federal judge lifted the stay. Although the Trump administration is appealing the decision, the appeal does not impact the submission requirement. Accordingly, employers with at least 100 employees and federal contractors now have until September 30, 2019 to submit Component 2 data from 2017 and 2018 for all employees.