On August 6, 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking requiring certain federal contractors to submit an annual Equal Pay Report on employee compensation. Under the proposed rule, Companies that file EEO1 reports, have more than one hundred employees and hold federal contracts or subcontracts worth more than fifty thousand dollars would need to submit an Equal Pay Report each year to the OFCCP.

The Equal Pay Report would “provide summary data on the compensation paid to employees by sex, race, ethnicity, specified job categories and other relevant data points.” The OFCCP plans to use these reports to “direct its enforcement resources toward contractors whose summary compensation data suggest potential pay violations.”  It also plans to release data on pay by race and gender in various industries. The official OFCCP news release can be accessed here.

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on August 8, 2014. Employers and other interested parties have until November 6, 2014, to submit comments to the OFCCP regarding the proposed rule.