New York City Council Employer Pay Data Reporting Requirement Bills Await Mayor’s Signature

Quick Hits

• On October 9, 2025, the New York City Council sent to the mayor pay reporting requirement legislation modeled after the EEO-1 Component 2 report that was collected by the EEOC in 2019 for the years 2017 and 2018.
• The pay data reporting would apply to New York City employers with 200 or more employees working in New York City during the reporting year.
• The report would require placing covered employees within pay bands and reporting them by EEO-1 category, gender, and race/ethnicity.
• Covered employers would be subject to civil penalties of $1,000 for the first offense and $5,000 for second and later offenses.

These bills if enacted would begin the process of putting into place an annual pay reporting requirement and a process for conducting a pay equity study on the employer-reported pay data. This process would be implemented over time with the pay reporting requirement to begin for employers after (i) an agency is selected by the mayor to handle the pay reporting and pay equity study, (ii) that agency develops a standardized fillable form for the pay reporting, and (iii) the designated agency publishes the fillable form. No later than one year after the first set of employer pay data reports are collected, the designated agency would conduct a pay equity study to evaluate whether there are pay disparities for employees based on gender or race/ethnicity as well as in particular industries and to determine if there are any trends in segregating employees into occupations. Below are highlights of the pay reporting process to be implemented provided these bills become effective.

Jurisdiction

Covered employers for purposes of this report are employers with 200 or more employees performing work for compensation on a full-time, part-time, or temporary basis. Where the employer’s workforce fluctuates employer size may be determined by counting the highest number of employees who were employed at any point during the reporting year. Employees to be counted are those who are employed within the City of New York, but do not include employees of the United States government, New York State government employees, or employees of the City of New York or any local government entity. The bills do not discuss remote employees.

Data Reporting Requirements

Once the annual pay data reporting process begins, covered employers will be required to submit information corresponding to the EEO-1 Component 2 report conducted by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for the years 2017 and 2018. The EEO-1 Component 2 report required employers to place employees in one of twelve pay bands within their respective EEO-1 category in addition to separating them by gender and race/ethnicity in the report form. This report relied on wage figures taken from Box 1 of the reporting year W-2 report for each employee, and which also included reporting hours each employee worked during the reporting year. The New York City law would allow the designated agency to create modifications to the EEO-1 Component 2 reporting structure including providing additional reporting options for different gender identities. Covered employers will have the option to provide explanations regarding the submitted information. The bills state that the report would not require covered employers to provide an individual employee’s personal information.

Statement of Accuracy

The bills would require covered employers to separately submit a signed statement by an authorized agent confirming the submission of the report and the accuracy of the information in the report. This is a difference between New York City’s planned pay reporting requirement and the EEO-1 Component 2 collection which did not require a separate signed statement.

Publication Requirements

The bills also include publication requirements. Specifically, the designated agency would annually publish a list of covered employers that are not in compliance with this requirement but only after the noncompliant employers are notified of their noncompliance and provided thirty days to comply. In addition, the designated agency would be required to publish the data contained in the pay reports in the aggregate and in a manner that does not reveal the identity of any covered employer or employee.

Penalties

The pending bills provide penalties for those covered employers who fail to meet the pay reporting requirements. For the first offense, a covered employer would receive a written warning and be provided thirty days to come into compliance. A covered employer that failed to comply following the written warning would be subject to a civil penalty of $1,000 provided it did not provide documentation within thirty days after being served with a summons. For any later offenses, a covered employer would be subject to a civil penalty of $5,000.

Pay Equity Study

If these bills are enacted, the designated agency would have up to one year after employers submit their pay reports to evaluate the data contained in the pay reports, determine whether there are disparities in compensation among employees based on gender and race or ethnicity, and if so, identify industries where disparities may be prevalent and other trends in occupational segregation based upon race and gender. The designated agency would have up to six months from the completion of the study to deliver the findings to the mayor and the speaker of the city council. New York City law currently includes a requirement for a pay equity analysis of the city government workforce.

Next Steps

If these bills are enacted, New York City will join California, Illinois, and Massachusetts in requiring employers to report pay data. This will mean that multistate employers operating in these jurisdictions will have to monitor the reach of these pay reporting laws to determine if they are required to provide pay data to these jurisdictions. They will also need to understand the different pay data reporting requirements as each has different requirements with California requiring a data submission, Illinois requiring data submission as well as a signed certification concerning several pay-related requirements, and Massachusetts requiring submission of the most recent EEO-1 form. New York City’s move toward pay data reporting signals the continuation of a trend where state and municipal governmental entities collect pay data in the absence of a federal government pay reporting requirement.

Employers with substantial New York City workforces will want to monitor the progress of these bills, which, if enacted, will require compliance with an annual pay reporting obligation. 

Ogletree Deakins’ New York office, Government Contracting and Reporting Practice Group, Pay Equity Practice Group, and Workforce Analytics and Compliance Practice Group will continue to monitor developments and will provide updates on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Compliance, Government Contracting and Reporting, Multistate Compliance, New York, Pay Equity, and Workforce Analytics and Compliance blogs as additional information becomes available.

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