EEOC Sets Deadline for Pay Data Submission
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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.