Legislative Update: Changes to Employer Pay Data Reporting (SB 464)
Attention employers with at least 100 or more employees! Continuing our Legislative Update series, we present Senate Bill 464, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on October 13, 2025, which makes changes to Government Code section 12999, relating to employer pay data.
Let’s take a closer look…
What is the current law?
Existing law establishes the Civil Rights Department (CRD) within the Business, Consumer Services, and Housing Agency to enforce civil rights laws with respect to housing and employment and to protect and safeguard the right of all persons to obtain and hold employment without discrimination based on specified characteristics or status.
Existing law requires a private employer that has 100 or more employees to submit an annual pay data report to the Civil Rights Department that includes the number of employees by race, ethnicity, and sex in 10 specified job categories, the number of employees by race, ethnicity, and sex whose pay falls within federal pay bands, within each job category the median and mean hourly rate for employees having any combination of those characteristics, and the total number of hours worked by each employee counted in each pay band during the “Reporting Year,” as specified.
Existing law authorizes the department, if it does not receive the pay data report, to seek an order requiring an employer to comply with these provisions. Existing law provides that upon the request of the department, a court may impose a civil penalty upon any employer for failure to file the required report, which shall be payable to the Civil Rights Enforcement and Litigation Fund.
What is a Pay Data Report?
California law requires private employers of 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 CRD.
The CRD maintains a web page that links to the portal through which employers submit their data to CRD (Pay Data Reporting Portal), a handbook with instructions for submitting and certifying annual reports to CRD (Handbook), a guide to using the portal (User Guide), Excel Templates that employers may use to submit their data (Excel Templates), examples of CSV submissions (CSV Examples), and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). We have been regularly alerting in our readers in advance about the pay data reporting deadline.
What does SB 464 do?
1) SB 464 revises, and until January 1, 2027 only, the above existing pay data demographic reporting requirements of private employers to:
- Require employers to collect and store any demographic information gathered by an employer or labor contractor for submitting the pay data reports separately from employees’ personnel records.
- Require, as opposed to current law that only authorizes, a court to impose a civil penalty against an employer that fails to submit the pay data report if requested to do so by CRD.
2) Beginning January 1, 2027, SB 464 continues the above changes and expands the pay data reporting requirements to increase the number of job categories that employers must report on to 23 to more accurately measure the occupations that workers are employed in. Specifically, the bill expands the job categories to include, among others, the following:
- Business and financial operations occupations.
- Computer and mathematical occupations.
- Community and social science occupations.
- Legal occupations.
- Educational instruction and library occupations.
- Health care practitioners and technical occupations.
- Health care support occupations.
- Food preparation and serving-related occupations.
- Building and ground cleaning and maintenance occupations.
- Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations.
- Construction and extraction occupations.
- Transportation and material moving occupations.
Rationale for the bill’s introduction
According to the author, Senator Smallwood-Cuevas: “Existing pay data reports have illuminated stark gaps in achievement between Black Californians and that [sic] rest of the state. For example, in 2022, for every $1 earned by white families, Black families earn just 58 cents, and just 52 cents for Latino families. These disparities are further exacerbated in the promotion of minority workers to executive or senior level positions. According to 2022 payee data, while white Californians make up 62% of positions at the executive or senior level, Black Californians hold just 4% of these positions.”
Employer Takeaways
To be ready for the next pay data reporting of May 12, 2026, employers should proactively take the following steps:
- Review California requirements: Immediately assess how California's new rules under SB 464 will impact your company, especially the new data storage and mandatory penalty provisions.
- Audit data practices: Ensure your company has a system to store employee demographic data separately from personnel records, as required by the 2026 California law.
- Monitor federal developments: Keep an eye on updates from the EEOC regarding potential changes to the federal EEO-1 reporting, as requirements could shift.
- Prepare for upcoming changes: For companies with a presence in California, start planning for the 2027 expansion of job categories. Evaluating how your current job titles map to the 23 new SOC codes will ease the transition when the change takes effect.
- Stay informed: Pay data reporting requirements are a dynamic area of compliance. Continuously monitor both state and federal legislative and regulatory developments to ensure your organization remains compliant.
Contact the Rosasco Law Group with any questions or concerns regarding pay data reporting requirements.
