California law requires private employers with 100 or more employees and/or 100 or more workers hired through labor contractors to annually report pay, demographic, and other workforce data to the Civil Rights Department (CRD). This reporting is required under Government Code section 12999, as amended by Senate Bill 1162. California’s pay data reporting deadline for Reporting Year 2025 is May 13, 2026, and employers do not have to wait until the portal opens to see this year’s reporting requirements. The California CRD has already posted preliminary pay data templates and a preliminary FAQ, giving employers an early look at data the CRD expects to collect this year.
What is changing this year
The big update is that the CRD is building three new required fields into both the Payroll Employee Report and the Labor Contractor Employee Report, which are:
- Exemption Status: Employers will need to identify whether each California employee is exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements under California wage orders and/or the Fair Labor Standards Act: pay data reporting is now pulling exemption status directly into the submission itself.
- Employment Type: Instead of only the usual full time and part time split, the CRD adds a third bucket: intermittent (intended for periodic or irregular schedules). This is a notable shift from the usual full time or part time framework, and it suggests the CRD is aiming for more precise comparisons across employees with similar schedules.
- Total Annual Weeks Worked: Employers must now report weeks worked in the aggregate by employee group. The FAQ indicates this metric includes weeks where an employee is paid but not working, such as paid leave. For labor contractor workers, the reported weeks worked should reflect the weeks worked for the client employer.
The CRD will still receive the familiar pay data groupings by job category, pay band, race or ethnicity, and gender, but these updates add more layers to how compensation data will be sorted and compared.
Why this matters (even before the portal opens)
These updates are not just extra boxes to fill in. They force employers to pull together data points that often live in different places (HR, timekeeping, payroll, and vendor reporting). The pay data templates also place exemption classifications front and center, which can draw attention to positions where job duties and pay practices are not perfectly aligned with how the role has been classified.
A practical way to use this preview
Although the CRD’s 2025 templates are preliminary and may change once the portal opens in February 2026, they are a clear signal of what data employers will be expected to produce. There are a few practical moves to consider now:
- Assign internal ownership early: confirm which teams will be responsible for pulling and validating each required field and build a timeline that includes time for review and corrections.
- Re-check exemption classifications: identify positions where duties or pay practices have shifted over the past year and confirm exempt and nonexempt designations remain appropriate under California law and the FLSA.
- Standardize employment type definitions: adopt clear internal criteria for full time, part time, and intermittent classifications, and apply them consistently across establishments and departments.
- Confirm “weeks worked” reporting capability: determine whether your payroll or timekeeping systems can calculate weeks worked reliably, including how paid leave weeks will be collected and aggregated.
- Quality control job and demographic data: verify job category, establishment assignments, and demographic fields are complete and current to reduce avoidable inconsistencies in the final report.
- Document methodologies and assumptions: where estimation is required or permitted, document the approach in advance to support consistency and defensibility.
If you have any questions about California pay data reporting requirements or preparing for the May 13, 2026, deadline, please contact the blog author or your favorite CDF attorney.
*Special thanks to CDF law clerk Victor Weber for his research and contributions to this article.
