EEOC to Restart Wage Data Collection, Rulemaking Program Finds

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After several stops over the past decade, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission appears ready to revisit wage data collection, according to its spring rulemaking agenda released Friday. The EEOC said it expects to propose a rule in January 2025.

The EEOC first added pay data collection requirements to the 2017 EEO-1 process under the Obama administration, but the White House Office of Management and Budget under the Trump administration he stopped the effortreferring to the act on reducing bureaucracy.

The judge then presented the requirements return to life in March 2019 — just 12 weeks before employers were due to apply — but the EEOC he abandoned the initiative after just one cycle, concluding that an internal analysis showed it had “underestimated” the burden on employers of collecting EEO-1 data.

Although the agency withdrew in 2019, it remained true to the concept of debt collection activities and commissioned a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to assess data quality.

The study, published in July 2022, noted that the data was incomplete, with about two-thirds of eligible companies asking for data for pay analysis and more than a third of the data found to be unreliable due to “extreme errors.” It also noted that the data showed only a partial reflection of total compensation and highlighted other problems with job and employee categorization.

Beyond the criticisms, NASEM said the data has the potential to be valuable. It made a number of suggestions to improve the process. “The findings and recommendations in the report will help the EEOC determine its approach to future data collections,” the agency said in its announcement.

The EEOC notice was among thousands of proposed or implemented actions detailed by the agencies in a statement Friday. Spring 2024 Regulatory Program.

According to White House Blog Postagenda highlights and expands on the administration’s efforts to engage the public in rulemaking. “Hearing from the people, businesses, and other stakeholders most affected by a particular problem or issue can help agencies better understand how to effectively address that problem, leading to better, more targeted rulemaking that is more responsive, effective, lasting, and fair,” Sam Berger, deputy administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote in a post.

The EEOC said it will seek public comment on its pay data collection rules.