The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has announced a proposal to revise the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to include the collection of pay data from employers (including but not limited to federal contractors) who have more than 100 employees. The goal of this new pay data is to assist the EEOC in the identification of potential pay discrimination, and encourage employers to promote equal pay in the workplace the EEOC by providing them with insight into any disparities that exist within industries and occupations.

The EEO-1 provides the federal government with workforce profiles from private sector employers by race, ethnicity, sex, and job category. The EEOC’s proposal would add aggregate data on pay ranges and hours worked to the information that is currently collected, beginning with the September 2017 EEO-1. This would require employers to report wages paid to their employees, including by race, ethnicity and sex. The proposal would not require reporting of specific salaries for each individual employee, but would be aggregated data reported across 10 job categories and 12 pay bands.

The EEOC would also would share this new pay data with the Office of Federal Compliance Contract Programs (OFCCP) who, using other data sources, will make this new pay data available to the public. By doing so, individuals seeking employment in a particular industry will be able to compare, by gender, race and ethnicity, aggregate pay for job groups across that industry.

More information about the proposed revisions to the EEO-1, including a Question and Answer document are available on EEOC’s website. Comments on the proposal are due by April 1, 2016, with final regulations to come after that, likely in late 2016 or early 2017.