Pay Data Reporting Expands Starting with 2026 Reporting Year

As reported in our 2025 year-end newsletter (here), the California Civil Rights Department (“CRD”) expanded the reporting requirements for the state’s annual demographic pay data reporting.  The reporting applies to employers with 100 or more employees during the calendar year with at least 1 employee who either (1) worked in CA or (2) worked remotely outside of CA but reported into an office in CA.  For employers that meet this threshold, the employer is obligated to file the report by the second Wednesday in May of the following year (for example, the 2026 report is due on Wednesday, May 12, 2027).  There are two types of reports required, one report covering the employer’s directly hired employees and a second report covering employees that the employer procured from a 3rd party labor contractor.  These requirements are fully explained in the CRD’s Handbook (here) and FAQs (here).  Starting with the report due on May 12, 2027 (covering employees in calendar year 2026), the CRD requires that the employees in both reports be slotted in one of 23 job categories (up from 10 job categories in previous years) and into 8 different race/ethnicity categories (with Middle Eastern North African – aka MENA – being the newest race/ethnic category added by the CRD last year).  Regarding the MENA category, employers should include MENA in the 8 race/ethnicity options that they ask newly hired employees about during onboarding so that this information is included in the employer’s reporting due on May 12, 2027.