Employers with at least 100 employees, and federal contractors with contract of at least $50,000 and 50 or more employees, are well aware of the EEO-1 report requirement. EEO-1 reports are due on March 31 of each year and include data on employee race/ethnicity and gender, called “Component 1” data.  Component 1 data is submitted through a web portal maintained by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and is used by the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to gauge compliance with federal equal opportunity laws. This year’s deadline was extended to May 31, 2019, a delay caused by the prior 35-day shutdown of the federal government over the budget.

The new wrinkle for employers is the requirement to submit “Component 2“ data. This requirement was established by the Obama administration and specifically called for employers to submit two years of information on compensation and hours worked from employee W-2 forms. The purpose of this requirement was to allow the administration to identify pay disparities across industries and occupations which would not otherwise be detectable by examining the Component 1 information. The Trump administration considered this new requirement to be too great a burden on employers and issued a stay on the requirement for Component 2 data. However, a federal judge lifted the stay. Although the Trump administration is appealing the decision, the appeal does not impact the submission requirement. Accordingly, employers with at least 100 employees and federal contractors now have until September 30, 2019 to submit Component 2 data from 2017 and 2018 for all employees.

This blog is presented under protest by the law firm of Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP.  It is essentially the random thoughts and opinions of someone who lives in the trenches of the war that often is employment law–he/she may well be a little shell-shocked.  So if you are thinking “woohoo, I just landed some free legal advice that will fix all my problems!”, think again.  This is commentary, people, a sketchy overview of some current legal issue with a dose of humor, but commentary nonetheless; as if Dennis Miller were a lawyer…and still mildly amusing.  No legal advice here; you would have to pay real US currency for that (unless you are my mom, and even then there are limits).  But feel free to contact us with your questions and comments—who knows, we might even answer you.  And if you want to spread this stuff around, feel free to do so, but please keep it in its present form (‘cause you can’t mess with this kind of poetry).  Big news: Copyright 2019.  All rights reserved; yep, all of them.

If you have any questions about this article, contact the writer directly, assuming he or she was brave enough to attach their name to it.  If you have any questions regarding this blog or your life in general, contact Kelly O. Scott, Esq., commander in chief of this blog and Head Honcho (official legal title) of ECJ’s Employment Law Department.