Businesses Must Submit Workforce Race, Sex Data to U.S. by May

Companies with more than 100 employees will need to submit data on their employees’ race, sex, ethnicity, and job groups to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission starting April 12, the agency announced Tuesday.

Employers will be required to file the data by a tentative May 17 deadline, as part of an annual submission known as the EEO-1 Report. The requirement previously had been delayed in the Covid-19 pandemic.

The EEOC’s collection will not include worker pay data, a component that had been subject to litigation. However, the agency is currently waiting on the results of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study evaluating race and gender pay data the commission has already gathered and how to best collect it in the future.

President Joe Biden has said closing racial and gender wage gaps is a priority, noting that collecting pay data from private employers is one strategy for doing so.