On July 13, 2016, the EEOC announced revisions to its proposal to require federal contractors and employers with 100 or more employees to add pay data to the information collected on EEO-1 reports. The original proposal, announced by the EEOC earlier this year, would add data on pay ranges and hours worked to the information collected from EEO-1s beginning with the September 2017 report. The data already collected from EEO-1 reports provides the federal government with workforce profiles that are sorted by race, ethnicity and gender.

The revisions, which appear to be a direct response to commentary by employers about the burdens imposed by the EEOC’s initial proposal, give employers additional time to prepare for the additional EEO-1 reporting requirements and also move the EEO-1 filing deadline to align with W-2 reporting. Under the revised proposal, for the upcoming 2016 EEO-1 report, the filing deadline will remain September 30, 2016. However, beginning with the 2017 report, the reporting deadline for all EEO-1 filers will be March 31st of the year following the EEO-1 report year. Thus, the 2017 EEO-1 report will be due on March 31, 2018. Changing the filing deadline will give employers six more months to prepare their recordkeeping systems for the 2017 report, and it will give them 1.5 years without filing an EEO-1 report (September 30, 2016 to March 31, 2018). At the same time, this change will align the EEO-1 with federal obligations to calculate and report W-2 earnings as of December 31st; the EEOC will not require a special W-2 calculation for the EEO-1.

A copy of the pre-publication version of the revised proposal is available here. The revised proposal will be published in the Federal Register on July 14. There is a 30-day public comment period on the revised proposal.