EEO-1 Report Filing Delayed Until 2021 Due to COVID-19

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today that 2019 EEO-1 Reports will be postponed until next year.  Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, and consistent with delays in other Federal reporting requirements, EEOC is delaying the reporting of 2019 EEO-1 workforce data (Component 1) until 2021 when the agency anticipates that filers will have resumed more normal operations.  As a result, covered employers will be required to submit both 2019 and 2020 EEO-1 Reports in March 2021.  EEOC’s proposal is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, and the program shift is pending approval by Office of Management and Budget.  EEOC submitted the EEO-1 Component 1 information collection proposal to OMB for approval in March 2020.

EEO-1 covered entities are all private sector employers with 100 or more employees, or federal government contractors and subcontractors with at least 50 employees.  In its current structure, a covered employer must take a workforce “snapshot” of its payroll during the fourth calendar quarter, and file race/ethnicity, gender and occupation data in an EEO-1 Report no later than March 30 of the following year.  EEOC had not yet opened its online reporting portal for filing 2019 workforce data, even though the original deadline was March 30, 2020.

Also delayed until January 2021 is the filing of 2020 EEO-3 (Local Union Report) and EEO-5 (Elementary-Secondary Staff Information Report) data collections.

Practical Tip:  Covered employers that are planning to change their HRIS/payroll vendor in the next year are highly advised to obtain a binding assurance that they will continue to have searchable access to their 2019 workforce data from the former software vendor.

We will keep you updated on any further developments to the EEO-1 Report program.