Employers in Washington that are planning to close a business location or undertake a mass layoff will soon be required to comply with 60 days’ advance notification and information requirements under the state’s new mini-WARN Act.
Employers will have until June 24, 2025, to submit reports covering calendar year 2024. In contrast to previous years, the EEOC said that the deadline will not be extended this year, giving employers just over a month to compile and submit data.
EEO-1 reporting requirements apply to private employers with 100 or more employees and certain federal contractors with 50 or more employees. Covered employers are required to submit information on the demographic composition of their workforce by job category, sex and race/ethnicity.
Data must be submitted electronically using the EEOC’s online data submission portal.
New for the 2024 reports, employers must classify all employees as either male or female. Previous data collections allowed employers to use a comment field to report nonbinary employees, but that option has been removed, likely as a result of President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order stating the administration’s policy of recognizing only two sexes, male and female.
In a statement about the opening of the 2024 data collection, Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas reminded employers that they may not use the demographic information collected for EEO-1 reporting purposes for a discriminatory purpose and emphasized that “there is no ‘diversity’ exception to Title VII’s requirements.”
