Since 2023, certain employers who operate in California have been required to file an annual report called a Pay Data Report (PDR) providing information about their employees. The report is due on the second Wednesday of May of each year (which in 2025 falls on May 14) and covers employment for the previous calendar year (2024).
On February 3, the California Civil Rights Department (the agency with which the annual pay data reports are to be filed) issued its guidance and templates for this year’s filing.
This filing requirement applies to a private employer that has 100 more payroll employees in total in the United States regardless of if it has fewer than 100 employees in California. Also, this requirement applies to an employer that has more than 100 workers it obtains from a labor contracting agency, as well as an employer whose total number of employees and labor contractor workers, combined, is at least 100. If a parent corporation has subsidiaries that are considered an integrated enterprise with a total of 100 or more employees and any of the employees are on the payroll in California, the parent and each subsidiary must file a PDR—each entity with one or more employees in California can file a separate report, or the group can file a combined report with information about the California employees of the entities in the group.
However, the information that an employer must provide on a PDR is limited to those employees who assigned to a California establishments or who are working in California. So, if an employer required to submit a PDR has only 5 California-based employees, its report will provide information on only those 5 employees. An establishments is either a California establishment or a non-California establishment to which a California employee is assigned.
Payroll employee is defined as employees for whom social security tax withholdings are made. Labor contractor employees is defined as an individual on a labor contractor’s payroll for which the labor contractor withholds social security taxes.
The California Civil Rights Department has developed and issued forms for reporting. Employees about whom the report is to be made includes employees who work remotely (teleworking) as well as those who report to an employer’s workplace. The report must provide information for the employer’s employees on a designated “Snapshot Period”, meaning a single pay period between October 1 and December 31 as selected by the employer.
The PDR form requires information about the employer, about the establishments, and about the California employees or labor contractor employees. Employee information that must be provided includes job category, race/ethnicity/sex combination, pay in 2024, pay bands, hours worked in 2024, and remote worker status. Within each establishment, employers will group California employees (i.e., create “employee groups”) with the same job category, pay band, race/ethnicity, and sex. For each employee group, employers must calculate the total hours worked by the group, the group’s mean and median hourly rates, and the number of remote workers. Employers that utilize labor contractor workers must provide additional information about the labor contractor and the employees that the employer utilized during the Snapshot Period.
The required reports must be filed electronically through the Department’s electronic portal and may be submitted by uploading an Excel file using CRD’s template, uploading a CSV file, or using the portal’s fillable forms.
The PDR requirement is complicated, and questions may arise about how to meet the requirements set forth in the lengthy Handbook issued by the California Civil Rights Department. If you have any questions about the PDR filing requirements or the information that must be supplied, please do not hesitate to contact us.