Employers can breathe a sigh of relief. The Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) announced this week that it was removing a requirement that EEO-1 reports contain employee pay data. The now-defunct Obama-era requirement announced in 2016 would have required employers to disclose compensation information to the EEOC regarding all employees, including executives – which many employers consider to be highly confidential. The OMB also announced that it extended the EEO-1 reporting deadline from September 30 of this year to March 31, 2018.
As we blogged about here, the previously approved EEO-1 report required employers to disclose compensation data along with the information they’ve provided for years: race, ethnicity, and gender by job category. Many employers were concerned about the burden of collecting such data for all employees, and disclosing it to the government for fear that the information would fall into the hands of competitors. The OMB’s decision to remove compensation as a reportable category resolves those concerns.