Employers will have to wait a bit longer to file their 2022 EEO-1 reports. The EEOC has announced that they have tentatively determined that the 2022 filing season will be delayed to the Fall of 2023.
The EEO-1 report, like many other “information collections” the federal government uses, is subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act. That means the agency, in this case the Joint Reporting Commission comprised of the EEOC and the OFCCP, has to obtain approval for their “information collection instruments” (the actual forms and surveys). That approval is typically only granted for a maximum of three years, after which time the agency must go through the approval process again.
The EEO-1 reports are up for renewal, and they are making important, substantive changes. They are eliminating the “Type 6,” “Establishment List Report,” and replacing it with a new “Establishment-Level Report.” Under the current scheme, employers have to count employees in each reporting establishment to determine whether to file a “Type 4” or a “Type 8” establishment report.
And if that is too in the weeds for you, just understand that they’re actually trying to simplify your reporting obligation here.
To that end, they’re also doing away with referring to reports as “Types,” and giving them names so we can better anthropomorphize them easier. The “Type 3” will just be referred to as the “Headquarters Report,” the “Type 2” will just be called the “Consolidated Report,” etc.
The EEOC started the revision and approval process back in November, 2022 and solicited public comment. They got two and they were both generally supportive of the revisions. They submitted the proposed changes to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs last month.
Approval for the current EEO-1 reporting scheme is automatically extended while the revisions are being considered, so the EEOC could open the filing season with the current reports, but they clearly don’t want to.
And this might be a chance for them to bring the EEO-1 filing deadline back to where it used to be before the short-lived “Component 2” pay data reporting requirement. EEO-1 reports used to be filed in the Fall, but the deadline had to be moved to the following Spring so that employers had time to close-out their end-of-year payroll and report on those numbers. No longer required to report pay data, there is no reason to keep the filing deadline in the Spring (particularly when you’re still using employee snapshots from the previous Fall to file those reports).
The fact that the EEOC has yet to formally move the filing date back to the Fall has caused many to speculate that they intend to bring back Component 2. We don’t know yet if this will mark a permanent shift to the EEO-1 filing season or not.
Be careful trying to read those tea leaves. And when it comes to EEO-1 reporting, we can relax for a bit.
If you have questions about this or any other federal contractor EEO obligation, feel free to reach out to us at BCGi@Biddle.com.