Who Must File the EEO-1 Report

You must file the EEO-1 Report if you:

• Are a private employer covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972) with 100 or more employees, excluding:
• A primary or secondary school system.
• An institution of higher education.
• A Native American tribe.
• A tax-exempt private membership club other than a labor organization.
• Have fewer than 100 employees and your company is owned or affiliated with another company, or there is centralized ownership, control or management (such as central control over personnel policies and labor relations) so that the group legally constitutes a single enterprise, and the entire enterprise employs a total of 100 or more employees.
• Are a federal contractor (private employer) who has 50 or more employees and you meet one or more of the following criteria:
• You are a prime contractor or first-tier subcontractor and have a contract, subcontract or purchase order amounting to $50,000 or more.
• You serve as a depository of government funds in any amount.
• You are a financial institution that is an issuing and paying agent for U.S. Savings Bonds.

EEO-1 Reporting Requirements

All single-establishment employers with 100 or more employees — those doing business at only one establishment in one location — must complete a single EEO-1 Report. You can use one of the alternate filing methods.

All multi-establishment employers — those doing business at more than one establishment — must file the following:

• A report that covers the principal or headquarters office;
• A separate report for each establishment that employs 50 or more people;
• A consolidated report that must include all employees by race, sex and job category in all establishments; and
• A list that shows the name, address, total employment and major activity for each establishment that employs fewer than 50 people.

The total number of employees indicated on the headquarters report, plus the establishment reports, plus the list of establishments with fewer than 50 employees, must equal the total number of employees shown on the consolidated report. All forms for a multi-establishment company must be collected by the headquarters office for its establishments or by the parent corporation for its subsidiary holdings and submitted in one package.

• For the purposes of the EEO-1 Report, the term “parent corporation” refers to any corporation that owns all or the majority stock of another corporation so that the latter stands as a subsidiary in relation to the parent corporation.

You must file the EEO-1 Report annually. The EEOC sets the reporting deadline, which may vary from year to year. Employers should monitor the EEOC website to confirm the reporting deadline. Employment figures from any pay period in October through December may be used.

The Web-based filing system provides you with up to 10 years of your company’s historical EEO-1 reporting information. No software needs to be installed because the form and instructions are completely online. If you filed an EEO-1 Report in previous years, you should find that some information on the form is filled in from the previous year. This system uses encrypted files for data transfer to ensure data privacy.

Each company has a unique identification number. Each establishment has a unique unit number. The company number and unit number are used together to identify an establishment within a company.

If you are a first-time filer, the EEOC’s website includes a registration form. The EEOC will issue a company number. You can log into the system to fill out the EEO-1 Report.

Employers must attempt to allow employees to use self-identification to complete the EEO-1 Report. The EEOC does not have any general requirement that permanent records of employee self-identification be kept. If voluntary self-identification forms are kept, they should be kept separate from all other personnel records or other records available to those responsible for personnel decisions (e.g., as part of an automatic data processing system in the payroll department).

Most questions can be answered by visiting the EEOC website.

Race Categories

The EEO-1 Report breaks down race and ethnic information into the following categories:

• Hispanic or Latino - A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
• White (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.
• Black or African American (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.
• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa or other Pacific Islands.
• Asian (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand and Vietnam.
• American Indian or Alaska Native (Not Hispanic or Latino) - A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintain tribal affiliation or community attachment.
• Two or More Races (Not Hispanic or Latino) - All persons who identify with more than one of the above five races.

Voluntary Survey

An employer may obtain race or ethnicity information by requesting that employees complete a voluntary survey. The EEOC recommends that the following language be included on the voluntary survey:

The employer is subject to certain governmental recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the administration of civil rights laws and regulations. In order to comply with these laws, the employer invites employees to voluntarily self-identify their race or ethnicity. Submission of this information is voluntary and refusal to provide it will not subject you to any adverse treatment. The information obtained will be kept confidential and may only be used in accordance with the provisions of applicable laws, executive orders, and regulations, including those that require the information to be summarized and reported to the federal government for civil rights enforcement. When reported, data will not identify any specific individual.

Any information on gender should also be obtained only on a voluntary basis to comply with both state and federal law.

You cannot refuse to hire someone, or take any other type of adverse action, because the individual does not want to self-identify.

Other Reporting Requirements

In addition to the EEO-1 requirements, there are three additional types of reports currently in use:

• EEO-3: Local Union Report
• EEO-4: State and Local Government Report
• EEO-5: Elementary-Secondary Staff Information Report

For more information on these reporting requirements, including who must file and filing deadlines, use the EEO Reporting Requirements chart.

• EEO Reporting Requirements

Pay Data Reporting in California

In addition to federal reporting requirements, California has its own pay data reporting requirements.

Private employers with 100 or more employees must submit a pay data report to the Civil Rights Department (CRD) that contains information about their employees’ race, ethnicity and gender in various job categories on or before the second Wednesday of May of each year.1

Specifically, employers must report:

1. The number of employees by race, ethnicity and sex in 10 different job title categories; and
2. The number of employees by race, ethnicity and sex, whose annual earnings fall within each of the pay bands used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Occupational Employment Statistics survey.
3. The median and mean hourly rate within each job category, for each combination of race, ethnicity and sex. (This information is new for 2023 reports.)

• Effective January 1, 2027, the law will expand the specified job title categories from 10 to 23.

For example, under the law, for employers submitting pay data reports in 2026, the reporting year for that report will be 2024, which means an employer can choose any single pay period between October 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025.

Employers will need to create a “snapshot” of their workforce. The “snapshot” is any single pay period of the employer’s choice between October 1 and December 31 of the re-porting year. The “reporting year” is the year preceding the due date for the report. For example, under the law, for employers submitting pay data reports in 2025, the reporting year for that report will be 2024, which means an employer can choose any single pay period between October 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024.

Once the employer has created the snapshot, they’ll need to calculate the annual earnings, as shown on their IRS Form W-2, for each employee that was employed during the snapshot as well as the total number of hours each employee in the snapshot worked in the reporting year.

Private employers that have “100 or more employees hired through labor contractors within the prior calendar year” are required to submit a separate pay data report covering the employees hired through labor contractors. The report must include the ownership names of all labor contractors used to supply employees.

“Labor contractor” means an individual or entity that supplies, either with or without a contract, a client employer with workers to perform labor within the client employer’s usual course of business.

For employers with multiple establishments, the employer must submit a report covering each establishment.

• Effective January 1, 2026, the law requires that any demographic information collected by an employer or labor contractor for pay data reporting purposes must be stored separately from employees' personnel records.

The CRD is authorized to enforce this reporting requirement with all covered employers and recover costs associated with that enforcement.

The CRD released a detailed User Guide, report templates and FAQs, which can be found on CRD’s website.

1. Gov’t. Code sec. 12999