The EEOC Wants to End Federal Workforce Demographic Reporting

Kentucky employers, school districts, local governments, unions, and state agencies could lose a federal reporting framework used to identify patterns in hiring, promotion, pay, and job assignments.

Jul 22, 2026

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission headquarters at 131 M Street NE in Washington, D.C. The Commission voted July 21, 2026, to propose ending federal demographic reports filed by covered employers, unions, governments, and public school districts. AgnosticPreachersKid/Wikimedia Commons

On July 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission voted to propose eliminating six federal workforce reports covering private employers, labor unions, state and local governments, public schools, apprenticeship programs, and colleges.

The proposal, titled Removal of Reporting Requirements, would remove the EEO-1 through EEO-6 reports from federal regulations. It would also eliminate requirements to create and preserve some of the race- and sex-based records associated with those reports.

The change has not taken effect. The EEOC approved a proposed rule, rather than a final rule. Employers, school districts, unions, and governments remain subject to the current requirements while the federal rulemaking continues.

The proposal nonetheless marks a significant change in direction. For roughly 60 years, the federal government has required covered employers to submit standardized information showing where workers of different races, ethnicities, and sexes are employed within an organization. The reports allow the EEOC to compare job categories, workplaces, industries, geographic areas, government salary bands, and public-school assignments.

Ending those reports would leave federal employment discrimination laws in place. It would reduce the amount of recurring information collected before a worker files a complaint or the EEOC begins an investigation.

What happened

The EEOC is a federal agency charged with enforcing laws that prohibit employment discrimination. Its commissioners vote on regulations and major agency policies.

At its July 21 meeting, the Commission approved a proposed rule identified as RIN 3046-AB37. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has presented the reporting program as burdensome, legally questionable, and inconsistent with her interpretation of equal-employment law. The proposal argues that requiring employers to classify employees by race and sex may encourage racial stereotyping or demographic balancing.

The proposal targets six reports:

EEO-1: Private employers and certain federal contractors
EEO-2: Apprenticeship programs
EEO-3: Local referral unions
EEO-4: State and local governments
EEO-5: Public elementary and secondary school districts
EEO-6: Colleges and universities

The immediate effect would be narrower than that list suggests. The EEOC stopped collecting EEO-2 apprenticeship reports in 1981 and EEO-6 higher-education reports in 1993. Removing those two provisions would largely clear dormant regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations.

The active collections are EEO-1, EEO-3, EEO-4, and EEO-5. Those reports cover large private employers, qualifying unions, state and local governments with at least 100 employees, and public school districts with at least 100 employees.

The proposal estimates that approximately 110,000 private employers, 5,999 unions, 6,607 state and local governments, and 10,500 public school districts fall within those reporting programs.

What employers and public agencies currently report

The familiar EEO-1 report does not describe every personnel decision or provide the federal government with individual employees’ names. Covered employers report aggregate workforce totals divided among job categories and demographic groups.

The report allows comparisons such as:

Who holds management positions
Who works in professional, technical, sales, administrative, service, or labor positions
Whether workforce patterns differ among company locations
How an employer compares with its industry or geographic labor market
Whether a possible discrimination complaint reflects a broader employment pattern

Private employers with at least 100 employees generally file EEO-1 reports. Certain federal contractors with at least 50 employees also file under applicable requirements. The EEOC says the reports include workforce data organized by job category, race or ethnicity, and sex.

The EEO-4 report performs a similar function for state and local government. Those reports include occupational categories and salary bands, allowing the EEOC to examine who is employed in higher-paid positions and who is concentrated in lower-paid government work.

The EEO-5 report covers public elementary and secondary schools. It organizes employees among 19 activity or assignment categories, such as administrators, principals, teachers, aides, guidance staff, and other school employees.

Employer-specific filings are generally confidential under Title VII. The EEOC publishes aggregate data with safeguards intended to prevent identification of a particular employer or employee. Its public files permit comparisons by state, industry, job category, race, ethnicity, and sex without turning the filing program into a public list of individual company workforces.

Congress gave the EEOC authority to require covered employers and other organizations to make and preserve reports that the Commission determines are “reasonable, necessary, or appropriate” for enforcing Title VII. The agency used that authority to create the EEO-1 report in 1966 and added the other reports over the following decade.

Because Congress granted the Commission discretion, the current Commission argues that it may conclude the reports are no longer necessary. A later Commission could attempt to restore them through another rulemaking.

What the EEOC would stop collecting

The federal government would stop requiring the active reports if the proposal becomes a final rule in its current form.

The EEOC would also remove report-specific requirements for employers to create and preserve certain records organized by race and sex. Employers would still have to preserve many personnel records concerning hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, and other employment decisions under separate regulations.

The agency could continue investigating discrimination complaints. It could request documents from an employer, issue administrative subpoenas, pursue systemic investigations, bring lawsuits, and enforce the federal employment discrimination laws within its jurisdiction.

The difference concerns when information becomes available and how consistently it is collected.

Under the current reporting framework, the EEOC receives standardized information on a recurring schedule before a particular worker proves that a larger pattern may exist. Without those reports, investigators may need to request information employer by employer after a charge is filed or an investigation begins.

Individual complaints do not always reveal broader practices. A worker may know that she was denied a promotion, but she may not know whether women are routinely excluded from management jobs across several locations. A job applicant may suspect racial discrimination without access to information showing who was hired over several years.

The EEOC’s earlier Systemic Task Force identified EEO reports as tools for detecting possible organization-wide discrimination and comparing employers by industry, geography, occupation, and establishment. The agency’s more recent performance plans continue to describe systemic investigations as a major enforcement responsibility. In fiscal year 2025, 93.7 percent of EEOC investigators and trial attorneys participated in systemic-discrimination training.

The proposed rule adopts a different assessment. It says the reports have limited practical value for current enforcement priorities and may encourage employers to make decisions based on race or sex.

That disagreement should be central to the public rulemaking.

The EEOC is replacing an earlier agency conclusion that standardized data supports systemic enforcement with a new conclusion that the collection provides too little value to justify its burdens.

Who receives the estimated $278 million in savings

The EEOC estimates that eliminating the reports would save employers, governments, unions, school districts, and the agency approximately $278.4 million each year.

Almost all of the estimated savings come from the EEO-1 program for private employers. The agency projects that approximately 110,000 employers submit more than 2.2 million reports annually because companies with multiple establishments file information covering multiple locations. It estimates more than 5.2 million total hours of annual EEO-1 reporting work.

The cost calculation is much smaller for public schools. The EEOC estimates that an EEO-5 filing takes an average of 1.7 hours and costs approximately $56.90 per school district during each two-year reporting cycle. Across 10,500 districts, it estimates approximately $597,472 in total biennial savings.

The proposal calculates the value of reduced HR, administrative, legal, technology, and government processing work. It does not assign a monetary value to losing comparable workforce data or requiring investigators to obtain information separately during future cases.

The proposed rule states that ending the reports would not affect difficult-to-quantify values such as equity, human dignity, and fairness. The Commission has invited public comments on the accuracy and completeness of that analysis.

That claim deserves evidence. The final rulemaking record should explain how the agency evaluated the reports’ use in charge investigations, systemic cases, referrals, research, litigation, conciliation, and state-agency partnerships before concluding that their removal carries no comparable cost.

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Kentucky has its own reporting duties and decisions

The federal proposal could affect several different Kentucky workplaces.

Large private employers based in Kentucky or operating Kentucky facilities file EEO-1 reports when they meet the applicable thresholds. Some federal contractors also have filing obligations. Their HR departments could discontinue federal submissions if the rule becomes final, although they may continue collecting demographic information for state compliance, internal reviews, litigation preparation, contracts, or voluntary workforce analysis.

Kentucky state government and larger local governments fall within EEO-4 reporting. Depending on workforce size, that may include state cabinets, consolidated governments, cities, counties, and other public employers.

Public school districts with at least 100 employees fall within EEO-5. Many Kentucky districts easily exceed that threshold. Their reports place teachers, administrators, aides, and other staff into standardized assignment categories.

The Kentucky Department of Education and individual districts may already collect some of the same information for state administration. Federal rescission would remove the uniform federal filing requirement and the national comparison framework. It would not order Kentucky districts to destroy their data or prohibit the Kentucky Department of Education from continuing its own collection.

Kentucky also has state authority that would remain separate from the federal rule.

KRS 18A.138 requires every Kentucky executive-branch cabinet, department, and agency to comply with the state government’s affirmative-action plan. The law directs the secretary of the Personnel Cabinet to conduct annual analysis for adverse effects in examination and selection procedures, monitor appointments and salary adjustments, report to the governor twice a year, and review the state plan annually.

That law gives the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet an independent reason to maintain workforce information.

A federal reporting rollback would not repeal the secretary’s duties under Kentucky law.

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights also enforces the Kentucky Civil Rights Act. Kentucky’s state law generally covers employers with eight or more employees, reaching many workplaces below the federal EEO-1 reporting threshold.

Kentucky Administrative Regulation 104 KAR 1:090 uses demographic categories associated with the EEOC and the U.S. Department of Labor when organizations respond to discrimination complaints or submit required reports. The regulation is scheduled to expire on January 29, 2027, unless Kentucky renews or replaces it through the state regulatory process.

The timing creates a specific decision for Kentucky. As the EEOC considers ending federal reports, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights must determine what happens to a state regulation that relies on federal demographic classifications.

Kentucky may therefore face two separate choices:

Whether the federal government will continue requiring standardized reports.
Whether Kentucky agencies, public employers, and schools will preserve comparable information under state authority.

Who is affected

Workers remain legally protected from employment discrimination if the rule becomes final. A Kentucky worker could continue filing a charge with the EEOC, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, or an eligible local human-rights agency.

The evidentiary environment could change.

Workers and their attorneys may have fewer standardized federal benchmarks available when examining hiring, promotion, job assignment, or compensation patterns. Investigators may have to obtain more records after a complaint is filed. Unions may lose a recurring federal source for comparing occupational patterns. Researchers and journalists may encounter gaps in future trend data.

Employers would receive the most substantial documented financial benefit. The proposal attributes roughly $273 million of its estimated annual savings to private-employer EEO-1 reporting.

School districts and local governments would save relatively small amounts under the agency’s own estimates. A public school district would save an average estimated filing cost of about $57 every two years. A state or local government would save an average of roughly $85 during its reporting cycle, according to the proposal’s burden calculations.

Public employers could decide that continuing a comparable internal report provides greater value than the small administrative savings. School boards, fiscal courts, mayors, and public HR directors would have authority over many of those local choices.

What you can do and what to watch

The EEOC announced a 30-day public-comment period beginning after the proposal is published in the Federal Register. As of the morning of July 22, I had not located the published notice or a Regulations.gov docket, so the final comment deadline had not yet been established.

The Commission scheduled a public hearing for August 11, 2026. Requests to testify are due August 7. Workers, unions, employers, school districts, governments, civil-rights organizations, attorneys, and researchers can ask to participate or submit written evidence.

Please note that useful comments should provide records rather than slogans. Commenters can document:

How EEO data have helped identify workplace patterns
Whether employers already maintain the information in HR databases
The actual time and expense required to complete the reports
How school districts or local governments use the reports internally
Whether state civil-rights agencies use federal data in investigations
Which reporting components could be simplified instead of eliminated
What information investigators would have to request separately
How gaps in future data would affect comparisons over time

You can also ask state decision-makers direct questions.

Ask the Kentucky Personnel Cabinet whether KRS 18A.138 workforce analysis will continue unchanged if the federal reports end. Request the most recent annual analysis and the secretary’s semiannual reports to the governor.

Ask the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights whether it intends to renew or replace 104 KAR 1:090 before January 29, 2027. Request a description of the annual reports governed by that regulation and how the Commission uses demographic information during investigations.

Ask the Kentucky Department of Education and local school boards whether they will preserve EEO-5-equivalent information. Request current staff demographic reports organized by assignment and position.

Ask local governments whether they will continue producing workforce information by job category and salary range. Fiscal courts, city councils, and consolidated governments can require their HR offices to retain useful public summaries.

Track the final rule. The EEOC must review significant public comments and explain its final decision. A final rule may differ from the July proposal, and litigation could follow.

The central Kentucky decision will not end with the federal vote.

State agencies, school districts, and local governments can preserve the information they need to evaluate their own hiring, promotion, job assignment, and compensation practices.

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