Researchers, advocates rail against government's efforts
to end workforce data collection
[August 12, 2026] By
CLAIRE SAVAGE and ALEXANDRA OLSON
Civil rights groups and researchers at a public hearing Tuesday called
on a federal agency to continue its annual collection of workplace
demographic data, arguing that a proposal to end the practice will
undermine efforts to fight discrimination.
Twenty-two speakers testified at the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission's hearing, which lasted more than two hours. Most opposed the
proposal to toss a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of
private sector employers to submit annual workforce demographic reports
to the EEOC, which is responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination
laws.
Six speakers, however, spoke out in favor of the proposal, siding with
the Trump administration's stance that reporting such data is burdensome
and encourages companies to adopt discriminatory practices to diversify
their workforces.
The proposal, currently subject to a 30-day public commentary period
ending Aug. 24, is a key step in President Donald Trump's efforts to
overhaul the country's civil rights enforcement, particularly stamping
out diversity and inclusion practices.
Since 1966, the EEOC has required companies with at least 100 employees,
or federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit a report each
year called an EEO-1 that breaks down gender and racial representation
across different roles, from executives to laborers and service workers.
The Republican-led EEOC voted 2-1 last month to stop collecting that
data, arguing that the reporting requirement may encourage employers to
engage in discriminatory tactics.
Civil rights groups argued the data has been a crucial tool for
uncovering systemic discrimination in the workplace and tracking the
progress of women and minorities since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"By weakening EEOC enforcement, these changes will harm all workers, but
particularly Black workers and other workers of color who continue to
face racial discrimination more frequently,” said Amalea Smirniotopoulos,
senior policy counsel at the civil rights group Legal Defense Fund.
Researchers said EEO-1 data has been crucial to their work.
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, co-director of the University of Massachusetts
Amherst's Center for Employment Equity, said he has relied on EEO-1 data
for dozens of research articles and two books. He said his research has
found that while workplace discrimination has declined since 1964,
progress has most recently stalled.
Without EEO-1 metrics, “our society will be flying blind into the
future,” he said.
Rachel Lee, president and general counsel of Stand with Asian Americans,
said the data has been critical for demonstrating that many Asian
Americans rarely reach the highest ranks of many companies, despite
comprising a large portion of professional roles.
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 “The EEO-1 report is the only
federal instrument that exposes what we call the bamboo ceiling,”
Lee said.
Several conservative advocates, however, criticized the EEO-1 data
as outdated and conducive to stereotyping and discrimination.
“It is inconsistent with equal opportunity law, potentially
unconstitutional, unnecessary to enforce anti-discrimination laws,
and imposes substantial burdens on both employers and the EEOC that
are not outweighed by its marginal benefits,” said Rachel Morrison,
fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center and a
former EEOC attorney.
Morrison pointed out that since the EEOC investigates some forms of
discrimination not captured in the EEO-1 data, such as religion and
pregnancy-related discrimination, the data “is not actually
necessary for EEOC to enforce Title VII or fulfill its mission.”
However, two prominent employer groups said there is little evidence
that companies have used EEO-1 data to engage in racial quotas or
other discriminatory employment practices, as the EEOC under the
leadership of its current conservative chair Andrea Lucas argues.
“Regarding the possible misuse of EEO-1 data, we cannot square that
with the experience of our members, and I might add with my personal
experience,” said David Fortney of the Institute for Workplace
Equality, a nonprofit employer association whose members include
many of the biggest U.S. companies.
Fortney, a former chief legal officer of the Labor Department under
President George H.W. Bush, said many employers instead use EEO-1
data to detect and prevent discriminatory practices. He said the
EEOC has not identified any instance of an employer using EEO-1 data
for discriminatory purposes.
“Presumably after six decades, if the agency had specific instances,
it would have called those out,” Fortney said.
Michael Eastman, of the Center for Workplace Compliance, described
examples of how its member companies have used the EEO-1 data to
uncover hiring and promotion practices that excluded certain groups.
One large company, he said, found data showed that an employee
referral program at a manufacturing facility consistently produced a
narrow applicant pool and “a homogenous hiring pattern at the
facility.”
Another company, he said, found an “unusual pattern” in its
promotion decisions that suggested that managers had misunderstood
internal policies to mean race and gender could be considered in
promotions.
“These examples reflect what many large employers are trying to do
when they use demographic data for compliance purposes,” said
Eastman.
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