EEOC Sets Deadline for Pay Data Submission

If you have over 100 employees or do business with the federal government, you have to submit voluminous pay data to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by September. After a period of uncertainty following orders issued in Nat'l Women's Law Ctr. v. OMB, 358 F. Supp. 3d 66 (D.D.C. 2019), the EEOC announced EEO-1 filers must submit data by race, national origin and gender on employee pay and hours – known as "Component 2" data – for the years 2017 and 2018 by Sept. 30, 2019. Employers that submitted the traditional EEO-1 information by the May 31, 2019, deadline are not off the hook: they must also meet the September deadline for wage and hour data.

In its original form, EEO-1 required employers with 100 or more employees and government contractors with 50 or more employees with a government contract of $50,000 or more to submit demographic information on their employees. The EEO-1 process was updated during the Obama administration to include Component 2, requiring pay and hour data by race, national origin and sex, but the Trump administration deferred the Component 2 requirement. In Nat'l Women's Law Ctr., that stay was thrown out and Component 2 reinstated. The Department of Justice has filed a Notice of Appeal of the reinstatement, but the EEOC has expressly warned that the appeal does not affect employers' obligations to submit Component 2 data.

All affected employers should start collecting Component 2 data now. Completing Component 2 requires employers to report wage information from Box 1 of the W-2 form and total hours worked by employees by race, ethnicity and sex within 12 proposed pay bands. Employers should be aware that completing Component 2 requires the aggregation of much more data than the original EEO-1 and could require additional personnel and software. The EEOC expects a web-based portal for the collection of Component 2 data to be available by mid-July.

If you have questions, please contact an attorney in our Employment and Labor Practice Group. Additionally, by June 17, 2019, the EEOC plans to open a helpdesk for employer questions on Component 2. The helpdesk can be reached by email at EEOCcompdata@norc.org or by phone at (877) 324-6214. 

This article was prepared with the assistance of Rachel L. Sodée, a rising 3L student at Vanderbilt University Law School.