Posted May 15th, 2019 in Top Stories, Legal Insights with Tags The Equal Pay Advisor

EEOC Pay Data Disclosure Deadlines Coming Soon

Joe Schmitt explains upcoming EEOC pay equity deadlines.

One of the Trump Administration’s first regulatory changes was to eliminate the planned EEOC collection of employee pay data. On August 29, 2017, the EEOC’s Acting Chair, Victoria Lipnic, announced that OMB had stayed the planned collection and, therefore, that employers need not disclose pay information when submitting 2017 EEO-1 reporting data to the EEOC. However, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently overturned OMB’s stay and held that the EEOC must collect pay information. Employers with at least 100 employees are now forced to quickly collect that data and prepare it for submission to the Commission.

The first deadline facing such employers is very soon – employers must submit their 2018 data for “Component 1” of the EEO-1 form by May 31, 2019, unless they request an extension from the EEOC. The deadline for submission for employees seeking an extension is now June 14, 2019. The Component 1 requirements do not include pay information; instead, employers must disclose the number of employees by race, ethnicity, and gender in each job category, as they have in the past.

After employers submit the Component 1 data, they must also submit “Component 2” pay information to the EEOC. The deadline for Component 2 submissions is September 30, 2019. At that time, employers must submit information regarding hours worked and W-2 compensation for employees in each of twelve pay bands, broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender. Employers must provide pay data for both 2017 and for 2018 as part of that submission.

Notably, the Department of Justice has appealed the district court’s decision. It is possible the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will overturn that decision or stay the deadline for employer compliance. However, there is no guarantee of any such decision, and employers would be well advised to begin their efforts to comply with the new requirements.