Last week, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced that it had finalized its rule for new EEO-1 pay equity reporting requirements.  The final rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register.

According to the EEOC’s announcement, the new rule, which was first proposed in January and then revised in July, requires private employers (including federal contractors) with 100 or more employees to submit pay data with their EEO-1 reports.  Employers with fewer than 100 employees will continue their current EEO-1 practices.  The first deadline for the new reports will not be until March 31, 2018.

Although the final rule has not yet been made available, the EEOC has issued a number of publications about the new rule—specifically, a new EEO-1 form, a “Small Business Fact Sheet,” and a “Questions and Answers” document.  Based on the content of these documents, the EEOC does not appear to have made significant changes to the revised proposed rule published for comment in July.

As discussed in our prior blog post, the new EEO-1 as proposed in July would require employers with 100 or more employees who already provide demographic information regarding the gender, race and ethnicity of their employees to provide additional data about employees’ W-2 earnings and hours worked.  The EEOC has stated that it intends to use the new data to assess allegations of pay discrimination.  The EEOC also intends to “compile and publish aggregate data that will help employers in conducting their own analysis of their pay practices.”

We expect to have additional insights and recommendations once the final rule is published.