Trump Administration to End Federal Collection of Corporate Workforce Diversity Data

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission notified the White House last week that it plans to eliminate the annual EEO-1 reporting requirement for corporations, labor unions, state and local governments, apprenticeship programs and schools. The reports have been collected since the 1960s and require companies with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees to submit standardized breakdowns of their workforce by race, ethnicity and sex.

VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin and established the EEOC to enforce those laws. The agency later used its authority under the act to mandate the demographic reports.

The public had limited access to the data until after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, when many corporations began releasing their reports voluntarily. Three-quarters of S&P 500 companies disclosed EEO-1 data for 2022 and 2023. That figure fell to about 57 percent in 2024.

The Trump administration views the change as part of its effort to unwind policies that promoted favored groups over others. Officials have argued that the reports encourage employers and the government to evaluate employees in racial terms. The Heritage Foundation had identified ending the reports as a priority in Project 2025.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies called the planned end of the reports one of the most consequential civil-rights reversals of this era. "For generations, America's civil-rights framework has operated on a simple premise: inequality can be measured," the organization wrote.

“Without this data, the EEOC loses its most basic tool needed to do its job." — Lily Zheng, fairness, access, inclusion and representation strategist A sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said employers and the EEOC would be flying blindly without the data. Some legal observers questioned the administration's reasoning, noting that White workers account for about 10 percent of race discrimination claims despite making up about two-thirds of the U.S. workforce. States such as California and Illinois already require employers to submit workforce demographics reports. If the federal government stops collecting the data, more states may enact similar requirements.”