US agency proposes ending racial and gender workforce data collection

What the report says

Al Jazeera reports that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has moved forward with a proposal to stop requiring many employers to file annual workforce demographic reports. The Republican-led commission voted 2-1 to advance the change, sending it to a 30-day public comment period, with a public hearing scheduled for August 11. EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas announced the vote on Tuesday.

The reporting system, known as EEO-1, has been in place for about six decades and gathers aggregated information on workers’ race and gender, rather than identifying individual employees. According to Al Jazeera, it applies to companies with at least 100 employees and federal contractors with at least 50 workers. The data is currently collected from about 73,000 employers and covers roughly 50 million workers.

The EEOC’s majority argued that the requirement is unnecessary and costly, estimating employer compliance costs at nearly $275m compared with about $4m in agency programme costs. Lucas also said the data collection conflicts with Title VII’s anti-discrimination framework, arguing it creates tension with “colorblind” employment practices and raises legal concerns when there is no specific allegation of discrimination.

Critics say the proposal would weaken a long-used enforcement and monitoring tool. Al Jazeera cited a May open letter from former EEOC officials rejecting the argument that demographic data collection encourages quotas or race-based hiring, calling that claim unsupported. The article also notes that ending the requirement was recommended in Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation policy blueprint associated with conservative priorities for President Donald Trump’s administration.