California Pay Data Reporting FAQ: Deadline, Filing, and Penalties

California pay data reporting is an annual filing that every private employer with 100 or more employees must submit to the state Civil Rights Department (CRD), disclosing workforce pay broken down by job category, pay band, race, ethnicity, and sex. Reports are due on the second Wednesday of May each year. For the 2025 reporting year, the deadline is May 13, 2026.¹ Missing the filing exposes an employer to civil penalties of up to $100 per employee the first time and up to $200 per employee for any repeat failure.²

Who Has to File

Two categories of private employers are covered under California Government Code section 12999.² A private employer with 100 or more payroll employees files a Payroll Employee Report if at least one employee works in California or is assigned to a California establishment. Separately, an employer that used 100 or more workers supplied by labor contractors during the prior calendar year files a Labor Contractor Employee Report, even if its own payroll is below 100.³

The two reports are not interchangeable. Payroll employees go on one, labor contractor workers on the other. The Labor Contractor Employee Report also has to name every labor contractor that supplied workers during the year.

How to Count to 100

The 100-employee threshold looks at your whole payroll, not just California. You count all employees on payroll during the snapshot period you select, or all employees you regularly employed during the reporting year, whichever gets you to 100. Part-time employees count. Out-of-state employees count.³ An employer with 95 employees in Texas and 5 in California is covered.

Once you know you have to file, the report itself only covers California-based employees and any workers assigned to a California establishment.

The 2026 Deadline and How to Submit

Reports are due on or before the second Wednesday of May each year. The 2025 reporting year deadline is May 13, 2026.¹ All filings go through the CRD’s online portal. Federal EEO-1 filings do not satisfy the California requirement, so an employer covered by both files each one separately.

The CRD publishes Excel templates and CSV examples for each reporting year, and employers must use the current version. The portal validates data formatting during upload, so it’s worth building in time before the deadline to work through rejected files.

What Goes in the Report

Each report layers several kinds of information about every California employee captured by your snapshot.

Every employee gets a sex, race, and ethnicity classification. The CRD allows non-binary sex identification and follows federal standards for race and ethnicity.¹ Each employee is placed in one of ten standardized job categories mirroring the federal EEO-1 system, from Executive/Senior-Level Officials and Managers down through Service Workers. The CRD publishes a mapping table linking Standard Occupational Classification codes to those ten categories.

Each employee is then placed in one of twelve pay bands based on total W-2 earnings for the entire reporting year, not just the snapshot pay period. The bands run from $19,239 and under up to $239,200 and over, using ranges published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.⁴ Within each unique combination of job category, pay band, race/ethnicity, and sex, the employer reports total hours worked, total weeks worked, and both the mean and median hourly rate of pay. For the 2025 reporting year, employers also report each employee’s exemption status and whether they are full-time or part-time.³

For each establishment, meaning each physical location where business operations take place, the report includes the name and address, six-digit NAICS code, a description of the major activity, whether the site is the headquarters, whether it appeared on a prior report, and the total employees assigned during the snapshot. Every California establishment is reported, even a one-person satellite office.⁴ Each establishment’s workforce is also broken into three remote-work groups: employees who don’t work remotely, remote employees inside California, and remote employees outside California assigned to a California site.

The Snapshot Period

All employee data is tied to a snapshot period, a single pay period the employer chooses between October 1 and December 31 of the reporting year. The snapshot determines which employees you report on and which job category they fall into. If an employee worked in more than one job category during the year, you assign them to the category where they spent the most time during the snapshot.⁴ Pay band placement still uses full-year W-2 earnings, not just the snapshot pay.

For labor contractor reports, the CRD encourages the client employer and labor contractor to agree on a single snapshot period. Different labor contractors working for the same employer do not have to use the same period, though overlapping periods are recommended.

Multiple Locations and Remote Workers

Whether an employer has one California office or fifty, it files a single Payroll Employee Report covering every California establishment, and a single Labor Contractor Employee Report if applicable.⁴ The headquarters is reported as its own establishment. An employee who reports to more than one establishment during the snapshot is reported by the location where they logged the most working hours.

Remote employees are reported under the establishment they are assigned to. If a remote worker has no physical assignment, report them under their manager’s establishment. If the manager also has no physical location, report them under the headquarters. For fully remote companies with no physical sites, the establishment address is wherever the business is legally registered.³

Penalties for Missing or Failing to File

If an employer fails to file, the CRD can go to court to compel compliance and recover its costs. The court can also impose civil penalties of up to $100 per employee for a first-time failure and up to $200 per employee for any subsequent failure.² For an employer with several hundred California employees, the exposure adds up fast.

When a labor contractor fails to supply the pay data a client employer needs to file, the court can shift an appropriate share of the penalty onto the labor contractor.

Is the Data Made Public

The statute puts two protections around what you submit. CRD officers and staff cannot make individually identifiable information public before an investigation or enforcement action begins, and even then only to the extent necessary for that proceeding.² Individually identifiable data is also exempt from the California Public Records Act, so it cannot be pulled through a records request.⁴ The CRD can publish aggregate reports drawn from the data, but they must be structured so no individual business or person can be identified.

1
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting
2
California Legislative Information. California Code Government Code 12999 – Annual Pay Data Report
3
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting – Frequently Asked Questions
4
California Civil Rights Department. California Pay Data Reporting Handbook