Last week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission revealed that the 2022 EEO-1 reporting deadline is again being postponed.  Reporting, which was expected to begin in July, is now “tentatively” scheduled to open in the fall of 2023.  The change was referenced in brief notices on an EEOC webpage and the EEO-1 website.

According to the EEO-1 website:

The EEOC is currently completing a mandatory, three-year renewal of the EEO-1 Component 1 data collection by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). Accordingly, the EEOC has updated the tentative opening of the 2022 EEO-1 Component 1 data collection to the Fall of 2023. All updates about the 2022 EEO-1 Component 1 data collection, including the final opening date and opening of the Filer Support Message Center, will be posted to www.eeocdata.org/eeo1 as they become available.

OMB’s approval of the EEO-1 report every three years has generally been a routine matter.  Therefore, it seems reasonable to suspect that the continued delay in the 2022 reporting cycle reflects a political battle over proposals to resume the collection of pay data as part of annual EEO-1 reporting.  Pay reporting was required in 2017 and 2018 but discontinued by the Trump administration.  While the Biden administration appears to favor its return, the Commission, which is currently composed of two Democratic and two Republican commissioners, seems unlikely to agree to such a proposal.  Therefore, as long as the nomination of a third Democrat to the five-person Commission remains stalled in the United States Senate, such a change in reporting requirements seems unlikely.