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EEOC moves to end 60-year employer demographic reporting

newsJul 21, 2026372,350

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted 2-1 to rescind a 60-year-old rule requiring tens of thousands of private employers to file annual EEO-1 workforce demographic reports, opening a 30-day public comment period before final approval. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas argued the reporting requirement "may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination." Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the commission's sole Democrat, voted against the proposal and said the move would "kneecap" the agency's ability to protect workers. Since 1966 the EEO-1 has required employers with 100 or more employees, and some federal contractors with 50 or more, to report counts by 10 job categories and by sex and race/ethnicity; the data typically cover more than 50 million employees and 73,000 employers. The EEOC historically used those data to guide enforcement priorities and investigations and received more than 88,000 worker complaints a year; former Democratic commissioners and civil rights groups warned ending the requirement would deprive the agency of a key tool for uncovering discrimination. The agency collected EEO-1 data for 2024 but has not publicly released it; collection for 2025 would have begun this year. The Biden-era public interactive tool displaying historical industry and job-category metrics relies on the same data the commission now proposes to stop collecting.

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