Employers with 100 or more employees will be required to submit pay data by race, sex, ethnicity and job category under proposed new revisions to the EEO-1 reporting form. The changes were announced Friday by the EEOC on the 7th anniversary of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and published today in the Federal Register. The additional data will “assist the agency in identifying possible pay discrimination, and will assist employers in promoting equal pay in their workplaces,” the EEOC says.
Currently, the EEO-1 form requires covered employers (federal contractors with at least 50 employees and private employers with at least 100 employees) to report numbers of employees by job category, race, ethnicity, and sex for one pay period prior to September 30 each year. Starting in 2017, contractors and private employers with at least 100 employees also will be required to submit pay and work hours data. The revised EEO-1 will aggregate pay data in 12 “pay bands” for 10 EEO-1 job categories. Employers will count and report the number of employees in each pay band. (For example, an employer might report that it employs three Asians as technicians in the 6th pay band, $49,920 – $62,919.) The EEOC contends that the use of bands will allow for variations within job categories, across job categories, and overall, while still supporting the ability to discern discrimination.
Employers are expected to use W-2 pay data in completing the EEO-1. The EEOC and Office of Contractor Compliance Programs plan to develop software that will analyze the W-2 pay distribution within the company and compare it to the aggregate industry or metropolitan area data.
A second component of the revised EEO-1 form will require reporting of total hours worked by the employees in each pay band. How employers are to report hours for salaried employees is not yet determined.
The EEOC seeks employer input regarding how to report hours for salaried employees. It also seeks comment on the utility and burden associated with collecting pay and hours data. All comments must be submitted on or before April 1, 2016 at: http://www.regulations.gov, or by mailing Bernadette Wilson, Acting Executive Officer, Executive Secretariat, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 131 M. Street NE, Washington, D.C. 20507.
