A proposal announced today by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires employers with more than 100 employees, including federal contractors, to include pay data on their Employer Information Reports. The new data will assist the agency in identifying possible pay discrimination and assist employers in promoting equal pay in their workplaces, according to the EEOC.

The new pay data would provide EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs of the Department of Labor with insight into pay disparities across industries and occupations and strengthen federal efforts to combat discrimination. This pay data would allow EEOC to compile and publish aggregated data that will help employers in conducting their own analysis of their pay practices to facilitate voluntary compliance. The agencies would use this pay data to assess complaints of discrimination, focus agency investigations, and identify existing pay disparities that may warrant further examination.

These new requirements add to the information that must be submitted on the EEO-1 report, a tool for affirmative action and non-discrimination compliance, according to George M. Reardon, an attorney whose practice focuses exclusively on staffing.

“Large staffing firms, like other large employers, will be subject to these new requirements with respect to their in-house (non-assigned) employees,” Reardon said. “However, in general (with some exceptions), information on temporary employees has not been required to be reported on the EEO-1. If attempts are made to broaden this initiative so as to undo that long-standing exemption, the staffing industry could make arguments for exemption based on the extremely difficult task of measuring, reporting, and comparing the pay of temporary workers.”

The proposal, which would cover more than 63 million employees, stems from a recommendation of the President’s Equal Pay Task Force and a Presidential Memorandum issued in April 2014. It expands on and replaces an earlier plan by the Department of Labor to collect similar information from federal contractors.

“We can’t know what we don’t know. We can’t deliver on the promise of equal pay unless we have the best, most comprehensive information about what people earn,” said Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez. “We expect that reporting this data will help employers to evaluate their own pay practices to prevent pay discrimination in their workplaces. The data collection also gives the Labor Department a more powerful tool to do its enforcement work, to ensure that federal contractors comply with fair pay laws and to root out discrimination where it does exist.”

The Los Angeles Times reported the US Chamber of Commerce criticized the new reporting requirement as too burdensome. The Obama administration move was a “fishing expedition to support a political agenda divorced from the facts,” the newspaper quoted Randy Johnson, senior VP of labor, immigration and employee benefits at the US Chamber of Commerce. “While we strongly support nondiscrimination in compensation, the type of reporting proposed by the administration today would place unnecessary and onerous burdens on employers while providing no meaningful insight as to whether employer pay practices are discriminatory.”

The revised EEO-1 was announced today in conjunction with the White House commemoration of the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.