A federal judge has ruled that the EEOC’s collection of EEO-1 Component 2 pay data for 2017 and 2018 is complete, allowing the reporting portal to close. The EEOC is in the process of seeking OMB approval to continue collecting the EEO-1 Component 1 demographic data for 2019 and beyond, but it has not yet indicated when the next collection period would open.
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Background
Federal regulations require private employers with 100 or more employees — and certain federal contractors and first-tier subcontractors with at least 50 employees — to submit the Employer Information Report EEO-1 to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC’s) EEO-1 Joint Reporting Committee annually. The filing contains demographic data of employees by job category, ethnicity, race, and sex (Component 1 data).
In 2016, the EEOC revised the EEO-1 to add the collection of summary pay data (Component 2), but the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) stayed the collection of Component 2 — not Component 1 — data before it began. (See our September 29, 2017 FYI.) A federal judge later ordered the EEOC to reinstate the revised EEO-1 and collect pay data for both 2017 and 2018 until the percentage of filers that submitted Component 2 reports equaled or exceeded the mean percentage of filers in each of the last four EEO-1 reporting cycles. (See our March 6 and April 5, 2019 issues of FYI Alert.)
On July 15, 2019, the EEOC opened a web-based portal for the expanded data collection. In October, it asked the court to deem the collection complete after more than 81% of eligible filers submitted Component 2 reports for calendar years 2017 and 2018. The court declined and ordered the EEOC to keep the reporting portal open until further notice. (See our November 15, 2019 FYI.)
Pay data collection complete
A February 7, 2020 joint status report advised the court that 89.2% of eligible filers had submitted Component 2 data — 2017 data from 88.8% of filers and 2018 data from 89.6% of filers. On February 10, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered that the EEO-1 Component 2 pay data collection is complete, allowing the pay data reporting portal to close.
Buck comment. In a September 12, 2019 Federal Register Notice of Information Collection, the EEOC indicated its intention to continue collecting Component 1 data for 2019, 2020, and 2021 and to discontinue the collection of Component 2 pay data. Applicable forms for that information collection will have to be approved by OMB before the 2019 EEO-1 survey can begin.
In closing
Although the EEOC is in the process of seeking OMB approval to continue collecting EEO-1 Component 1 data, it has not yet indicated when the next collection period would open.
Volume 43 | Issue 10