Many employers will be required to supply pay data to the United States government under a recently proposed EEOC rule.  The proposed rule will require federal contractors and other employers with more than 100 workers to include compensation and hours-worked data in its annual EEO-1 filings.

Employers do not have to scramble to get the data ready just yet.  The proposal, if it becomes a final rule, is not set to go in effect until September 2017 EEO-1 filings are due.

What to expect

In short, employers should expect to work quite a bit harder to fulfill their EEO reporting requirements.  Currently, employers must identify the number of employees by race, gender and job category.  The new reporting requirements will be two-fold.  First, employers will have to report the number of employees in each category by salary band.  Second, the employer will have to report the number of hours worked by salary band.

The proposed new pay data section of the EEO-1 Form will require employers to identify the number of employees who have yearly earnings within various salary bands by race, gender and type of work performed.  For example, an employer will have to identify the number of “Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers” who earn between $62,920 and $80,079.  Then, those figures will be broken out again by race/ethnicity and gender.  Pay bands will be determined by an employee’s W-2 earnings.

Employers will then be required to report the aggregate amount of hours worked for each category.  So, to borrow from the previous example, an employer will have to identify the number of hours worked by Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers” who earn between $62,920 and $80,079 for each category—male, female, and each of the race/ethnicity categories.

Employers invited to comment

The proposed rule was submitted to the Federal Register on February 1, 2016.  Members of the public have until April 1, 2016, to submit a formal comment.  The EEOC – perhaps recognizing the difficulty of the reporting requirements – specifically seeks employer input with respect to how to report hours worked for salaried employees.  Comments may be submitted online via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov.