The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced on April 3, 2019, that employers have until September 30, 2019, to submit employee pay data as part of their annual 2018 EEO-1 report.

As discussed in our previous alerts here and here, this process has been plagued with uncertainty. On March 4, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the U.S. Office of Management and Budget's stay on the pay data reporting obligations, renewing the Obama-era requirement that employers submit employee pay data organized by race, sex, and ethnicity.

But when the EEOC's online reporting portal opened on March 18, it was still unclear whether these new reporting requirements would be postponed until the 2019 reporting cycle, or whether they would apply to the 2018 EEO-1—and whether any extra time to respond would be given.

This push to include employee pay data in the 2018 reporting cycle aligns with the recent increased national awareness of the longstanding "gender gap" in wages and other compensation. Advocates for the new reporting requirements hope that by forcing employers to reveal potential gender pay gaps through the EEO-1 reporting mechanism, employers will feel pressured to address any differences in pay and emphasize gender equality throughout their workforces.

The new EEO-1 requirements require detailed pay information. Given this, employers are encouraged to begin compiling their pay data well in advance of the September 30 deadline.