California EEO Reporting: Contents, Filing, and Penalties

California pay data reporting requirements apply to private employers with 100 or more employees and are enforced by the Civil Rights Department (CRD) under Government Code section 12999. For the 2025 reporting year, reports are due May 13, 2026. Depending on how you staff your workforce, you may owe a Payroll Employee Report, a Labor Contractor Employee Report, or both. Each report breaks your California workforce down by establishment, job category, race, ethnicity, sex, pay band, hours worked, and mean and median hourly rates.¹

Who Has to File

Two separate thresholds trigger a filing obligation. A private employer must submit a Payroll Employee Report if it has 100 or more payroll employees total and at least one of those employees works in California. A private employer must submit a Labor Contractor Employee Report if it uses 100 or more labor contractor employees total and at least one of those workers is in California.¹ The headcount is nationwide, so a company with 95 workers in Texas and 5 in California still crosses the threshold.

You meet the 100-employee threshold either by having 100 or more employees during the snapshot pay period you select, or by regularly employing 100 or more people during the reporting year. Part-time and temporary workers count.²

The Two Reports

The Payroll Employee Report covers everyone on your own payroll. The Labor Contractor Employee Report covers workers supplied by outside contractors to perform labor within your usual course of business. Some employers owe both.³

For labor contractor workers, the filing responsibility falls on the client employer, not the contractor. Contractors are legally required to hand over the demographic and pay data the client needs. If a contractor doesn’t cooperate, document the gap. Penalty apportionment between the client and the contractor is possible if the CRD takes enforcement action.¹

Employers with multiple establishments submit a separate report for each location, for both payroll and labor contractor employees. The Labor Contractor Employee Report also requires identifying information for each contractor used.

What Goes in the Report

Every report begins with a snapshot. Pick a single pay period between October 1 and December 31 of the reporting year, then count all California employees working during that period. Each employee is classified across several dimensions, and you report aggregate numbers for each combination of those dimensions at each establishment.

Job Categories

Each employee is placed into one of ten job categories that mirror the federal EEO-1 classifications:⁴

Executive or senior-level officials and managers
First or mid-level officials and managers
Professionals
Technicians
Sales workers
Administrative support workers
Craft workers
Operatives
Laborers and helpers
Service workers

Demographics

Report race, ethnicity, and sex for each employee. If an employee declines to self-identify, use existing employment records or personal observation to assign a category. If you still can’t determine the information, report the employee as “not specified.”⁴ Overusing “not specified” invites scrutiny; the CRD expects a genuine effort to collect this data.

Pay Bands

Slot each employee’s annual earnings into one of twelve pay bands based on W-2 Box 5 (Medicare wages and tips). If an employee has no wages in Box 5, use Box 1 instead.⁴ The bands are:

$19,239 and under
$19,240 – $24,959
$24,960 – $32,239
$32,240 – $41,079
$41,080 – $53,039
$53,040 – $68,119
$68,120 – $87,359
$87,360 – $112,319
$112,320 – $144,559
$144,560 – $186,159
$186,160 – $239,199
$239,200 and over

Hours and Weeks Worked

For each employee group (the combination of establishment, job category, race/ethnicity, sex, pay band, exemption status, and employment type), report total hours worked during the entire reporting year. Hours include all time for which the employee received pay, such as vacation, holidays, sick leave, and jury duty. Also report total annual weeks worked for each group, counting any week during which the employee was on paid leave.⁴

Mean and Median Hourly Rates

Each employee group needs both a mean and a median hourly rate. The mean is the group’s total annual earnings (W-2 Box 5) divided by the group’s total hours worked. The median is the middle value when you line up individual hourly rates from lowest to highest; if the group has an even number of employees, average the two middle values.⁴ This is where most reporting errors happen. Each individual’s Box 5 earnings divided by that individual’s hours produces the rate used for the median; the mean uses aggregate figures for the whole group.

Exemption Status and Employment Type

For the 2025 reporting year, classify each California employee as either exempt or nonexempt under California wage orders or the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Assign each employee an employment type as well: full-time, part-time, or intermittent (for periodic or irregular schedules).⁴

Where Remote Workers Get Counted

Multi-location employers often stumble here. Assign each remote worker to the establishment where they are assigned to conduct business. If a remote employee isn’t assigned to any physical location, assign them to the establishment where their manager reports. If neither the employee nor their manager reports to a physical site, use the employer’s headquarters. A fully remote company with no physical offices reports the address where the business is legally registered.⁴ Never use an employee’s home address on any pay data report.

How to File and When

The CRD provides standardized Excel and CSV templates on its website. Once populated, upload them through the CRD’s online Pay Data Reporting Portal. First-time filers create an account; returning users log in with existing credentials.⁵

The portal validates your files at upload. If formatting errors or missing fields turn up, you’ll be prompted to fix them before proceeding. After validation, a designated company official certifies that the data is accurate. The annual deadline is the second Wednesday of May. For the 2025 reporting year, that date is May 13, 2026.³

Fixing a Report After You File

Before certification, you can re-enter the portal and edit freely. After certification, the report becomes read-only, but you can decertify and edit it within seven calendar days of the filing deadline. If you find an error more than seven days after the deadline, contact the CRD directly with a description of the problem.⁵ Filing a week early gives you a buffer to catch mistakes while corrections are still self-service.

Confidentiality

Government Code section 12999 protects individually identifiable information in your report. CRD employees may not publicly disclose any data tied to a specific business or person before an investigation or enforcement proceeding begins, and even then, only to the extent needed for that proceeding. Your submitted data is exempt from the California Public Records Act, so the public cannot request it through standard disclosure channels.¹ The CRD does publish annual aggregate reports, designed so the numbers cannot be linked back to a specific employer.

Penalties for Not Filing

If the CRD doesn’t receive your report, it can seek a court order compelling you to file and recover its costs, including attorney fees.¹ Courts can also impose civil penalties of up to $100 per employee for a first failure to file, and up to $200 per employee for any subsequent failure. For a 500-employee company, a repeat violation could mean $100,000 in fines alone, before the CRD’s legal costs.

Starting January 1, 2027, Senate Bill 464 changes the penalty language from discretionary to mandatory. Under the amended statute, courts will be required to impose these fines when the CRD requests them, rather than having the option to decline. SB 464 also allows courts to apportion penalties to labor contractors that fail to provide the necessary pay data to their client employers.⁶

1
California Legislative Information. California Code Government Code 12999
2
Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting FAQ
3
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting
4
Civil Rights Department, State of California. California Pay Data Reporting Handbook
5
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting Portal
6
LegiScan. Bill Text CA SB464 – Regular Session – Chaptered