EEOC Reinstates EEO-1 Report Filing Program For 2021
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced this week that covered employers will be required to submit EEO-1 Reports again in 2021. After a year off when the program was deferred because employers (and the EEOC) were overwhelmed by the impact of the COVID-19 public health emergency, private sector employers must submit their workforce data in April 2021. Because covered employers were given a pass last year, this year employers must submit workforce data for both 2019 and 2020.
An EEO-1 Report must be submitted by all private sector employers with at least 100 employees, federal contractors with 50 or more employees, and certain types of public employers. Now known as EEO-1 Component 1, this data submission has been required for over 50 years.
The precise opening of EEOC’s online filing portal, as well as the new submission deadline date, will be announced by a notice on the EEOC’s website. The agency has also established a new dedicated website for the data collections at https://EEOCdata.org. As in previous years, a notification letter will also be sent to businesses that have filed an EEO-1 Report in the past.
Covered employers would be wise to start planning and assigning responsibility internally for their workforce data collection and formatting. Moreover, employers that switched HRIS vendors and/or changed their employee database software since 2018 should make sure that they can access the full workforce data for this two-year period.
The following opening dates were announced by EEOC:
- April 2021: 2019 and 2020 EEO-1 Component 1 Data Collection (Private Sector Employers)
- July 2021: 2020 EEO-5 Data Collection (Public Elementary/Secondary School Districts)
- August 2021: 2020 EEO-3 Data Collection (Local Referral Unions)
- October 2021: 2021 EEO-4 Data Collection (State/Local Governments)
We will keep you posted as soon as EEOC announces specific dates of opening its online filing portal, as well as the actual submission deadline.