White House Won’t Require Firms to Report Pay by Gender, Race

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The White House on Tuesday said it will halt a planned Obama-era rule that would have required businesses to begin collecting data about how much they pay workers of different genders, races and ethnic groups, saying it posed a burden to employers.

The data-collection requirement was proposed by the Obama administration in 2016 as part of its efforts to address pay disparities among workers of different groups.

The Trump administration will stay the implementation of the rule, which would have required employers to report the pay data for the first time in the spring.

“It’s enormously burdensome,” said Neomi Rao, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which analyzes the cost of federal rules and regulations. “We don’t believe it would actually help us gather information about wage and employment discrimination."

The Obama administration proposal directed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to begin collecting wage and pay data from private employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors with 50 or more employees. The proposal effectively expanded the range of data employers were required to report beginning this year on a form called the EEO-1. That form has been used for decades to collect information on the racial and gender makeup of the American workforce but hasn’t measured how different groups are paid.

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The Obama administration said the proposal would better allow the EEOC to analyze and combat pay discrimination.

In a memo, dated Tuesday, to Victoria Lipnic, the acting chairwoman of the EEOC, Ms. Rao said the White House Office of Management and Budget would stay the rule and conduct a review, adding that the administration believes its reporting requirements fail to meet the standards of federal laws intended to cut down on burdensome or onerous paperwork requirements.

“Among other things, OMB is concerned that some aspects of the revised collection of information lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues,” Ms. Rao wrote.

The White House says that the new data sought under the rule is too voluminous to comply with the federal Paperwork Reduction Act. But White House officials also say they doubt that meaningful findings of pay discrimination could be gleaned from the new data.

In announcing the decision to not go ahead with the rule, the administration issued a statement from Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, who serves as an unpaid assistant to the president.

“Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” Ms. Trump said. “We look forward to continuing to work with EEOC, OMB, Congress and all relevant stakeholders on robust policies aimed at eliminating the gender wage gap.

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