No sooner did employers submit their 2016 EEO-1 filings, than a new EEO-1 form requiring more detailed information was approved by the EEOC.

Generally, federal contractors and private employers with 100 or more employees are required to complete the well-established EEO-1 report each year. Employers currently provide employment data that identifies by job category demographic information about race, gender and ethnicity. The old EEO-1 form can be viewed here. The revised EEO-1 form now requires that employers also provide the aggregate of employees’ pay, as reflected in Box 1 of W-2 forms, by job category and broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity. You can view a copy of the new form here.

The EEOC announced its original proposal on January 29, 2016. A public hearing was conducted on March 16, 2016, and public comment was available until April 1, 2016. Hundreds of public written comments were submitted expressing concerns with the revised form.  Predominately, employers expressed concern with the burden imposed by the new reporting requirements, the potential for unwarranted inferences of discrimination based on newly compiled employment data, and the efficacy of the new data as it relates to protecting against discrimination. Ultimately, the EEOC was not persuaded and chose to move forward with the changes to the EEO-1 form. However, the timeline for filing future EEO-1 forms has now been extended until March 31, so employers can utilize prior year W-2s to provide the pay data.

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