The EEOC has announced that the long-delayed 2022 EEO-1 reporting period will finally open on October 31, 2023. The deadline for filing will be December 5, 2023.
All employers with 100 or more U.S. employees and federal contractors with at least 50 U.S. employees are required to submit an EEO-1 report to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) each year. The EEO-1 report provides the EEOC with data about the size, location, race or ethnicity, and gender demographics of an employer's workforce. The 2022 report will have to be based on a workforce payroll snapshot taken between October 1 and December 31, 2022.
The EEOC has stated that all updates about the 2022 EEO-1 data collection, including an updated Instruction Booklet and Data File Upload Specifications, will be posted to www.eeocdata.org/eeo1 on Wednesday, September 13, 2023. The EEOC also states that it anticipates posting the updated 2022 EEO-1 Component 1 Instruction Booklet for filers on Wednesday, September 6, 2023.
As companies make all necessary programming changes this year to produce the file in accordance with the new format, they should be mindful that with the renewal of the EEO-1 form being applicable for one year only, there could be additional formatting changes within the next 1-2 years (for example, it is likely that the agency will seek to revisit in some form or fashion its collection of data on employee compensation and hours worked). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) told the EEOC in the renewal that EEOC should work "closely with OMB to ensure that the collection is preparing to become fully compliant with upcoming revisions to OMB's Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity and any associated OMB guidance."
We do not yet know whether the EEO-1 reporting interface will have been modified to make it easier to report individuals that identify as non-binary. However, as has been true for the past several years, employers that are legally required to respect employees' self-identification as to gender should report that information on the EEO-1 as it has been provided by the employee. Such legal requirements apply to federal contractors, to all employers in some states, and arguably may arise under Title VII.
As employers continue to face pressure from various groups to make EEO-1 reports public and as certain states (most notably California and Illinois) have linked their own reporting requirements to the EEO-1 format, it has become more important than ever to pay attention to the EEO-1 reporting process to ensure that the reports are complete and accurate.
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