EEOC quietly cancels gender pay data collection in August 2017

On August 29, 2017, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, quietly canceled the planned data collection from US business for pay by gender. You can read the announcement here:

EEOC cancels pay data collection

The EEOC was planning to collect data on pay and hours worked in addition to the current mandate of employees by race, sex, ethnicity and job category. The additional data to be collect was pay by salary bands. The information is a relatively simple addition to the current data.  Many HR departments already perform the same analysis internally.

The data would have provided a view of how widely women are paid less than men.

The move to cancel the Obama era regulation was widely expected. Industry groups lobbied heavily against the proposal during review phase calling it burdensome.

Proponents, including this blog, argued the data was needed to measure the gender pay gap.

Some HR consultants already started preparing for the change last year. A quick look at a presentation by HR consulting company: Gerstco shows the power of collecting the data.

The company has a great presentation on the change which can be viewed here.

The data would have allowed HR professionals to create reports and graphics such as the one of page 28 of the presentation which shows which job categories have pay equity and which do not. Green categories have gender pay equality while the red do not. Absolutely brilliant.