Are You Ready to Report Pay Data to the EEOC?

As the old song goes, it’s summertime and the living is easy.  Unfortunately, that may not be true for certain Human Resources professionals, who were recently reminded of their new EEO-1 obligations to report employee data on pay and hours worked to the federal government.

You may recall that in 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor introduced regulations that would require employers who file EEO-1 reports—private employers with at least one hundred (100) employees or certain federal contractors or subcontractors—to report additional data so as to identify potential pay gap issues.  In particular, covered employers would need to report aggregate data on hours and compensation (“Component 2 Data”) in addition to data on head-counts by gender and race or ethnicity (“Component 1 Data”).  Although the deadline for the reporting of Component 2 Data was delayed by litigation, the court recently set a deadline of September 30, 2019 for covered employers to report Component 2 Data for both 2017 and 2018.

What does this mean for covered employers?  You have less than three (3) months to collect, organize, and report data on W-2 compensation and hours worked for all employees accounted for in your 2017 and 2018 EEO-1 reports.  In other words, for each EEO job category, you will need to list how many employees (by both race and gender) fall within each of twelve (12) pay bands.  You will also need to do the same with respect to aggregate hours worked.

The EEOC has recently issued resources—such as sample forms, an instruction booklet, and a fact sheet—in an attempt to help covered employers comply with this new mandate.  The resources can be found here: https://eeoccomp2.norc.org/info.html.  As it appears unlikely that a court decision or the Trump administration will step in ahead of the upcoming deadline, covered employers would be wise to start collecting their Component 2 Data. 

For any questions about this or any other labor and employment topic, please do not hesitate to contact the attorneys at Hoffman & Hlavac.