On March 29, 2021, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced that data collection for 2019 and 2020 EEO-1 Component 1 filing will open on Monday, April 26, 2021, and that employers will have until Monday, July 19, 2021 to submit their data for those years. Each year, employers with 100 or more employees (and federal contractors with 50 or more employees) must file EEO-1 Component 1 data, which consists of demographic information, such as race, gender and ethnicity information, of the employer’s workforce by job category.

As you may recall, in 2020, the EEOC delayed the opening of the 2019 EEO-1 Component 1 Data Collection due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. Therefore, this year, employers are required to make two submissions: one with 2019 EEO-1 data and one with 2020 EEO-1 data. The EEOC is extending the data collection period this year from 10 weeks to 12 weeks to provide employers additional time to file, acknowledging that the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact workplaces across the country and recognizing that the requirement to submit two years of EEO-1 data is a substantial undertaking.

The EEOC recommends that filers start preparing to submit data in anticipation of the April 26 opening of the data collection period. For more information regarding the data collection, EEO filers can go to https://EEOCdata.org.

Also of note, as we discussed in a previous post, a new California law (SB 973) enacted on September 30, 2020 requires private employers who have 100 or more employees  (with at least one employee in California)  to submit an annual pay data report to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”) by March 31, 2021, and annually thereafter. Despite the federal extension for the EEO-1 deadline, California employers should still plan to submit this California pay data reporting to the DFEH by March 31, 2021, unless they have requested a deferral period from the DFEH.

California pay data reporting requirements.