[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 235 (Friday, December 6, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 96963-96965]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-28580]
=======================================================================
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION
Agency Information Collection Activities: Existing Collection
AGENCY: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
ACTION: Notice of information collection--proposed revision of State
and Local Government Information Report (EEO-4).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC or Commission) announces
that it has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a
request for a three-year PRA approval of revisions to the currently
approved State and Local Government Information Report (EEO-4).
DATES: Written comments on this notice must be submitted on or before
January 6, 2025.
ADDRESSES: Written comments should be sent within 30 days of
publication of this final notice to www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.
Find this information collection by selecting ``Currently under
Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search function.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Paul Guerino, Director, Data
Development and Information Products Division, Office of Enterprise
Data and Analytics (OEDA), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 131
M Street NE, Washington, DC 20507; (202) 921-2928 (voice), (800) 669-
6820 (TTY) or email at [email protected]. Requests for this notice in an
alternative format should be made to the EEOC's Office of
Communications and Legislative Affairs at (202) 921-3191 (voice), (800)
669-6820 (TTY), or (844) 234-5122 (ASL Video Phone).
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: A notice that the EEOC would be submitting
this request was published in the Federal Register on September 4,
2024, allowing for a 60-day public comment period which ended on
November 4, 2024.\1\ The EEOC received no comments during the public
comment period.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See Notice of Information Collection 89 FR 71901 (Sept. 4,
2024) at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/04/2024-19743/agency-information-collection-activities-existing-collection.
\2\ Available at https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EEOC-2024-0008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. Background
A. The EEO-4 Report
Since 1973, the EEOC has required EEO-4 filers to submit workforce
demographic data. All State and local governments that are covered by
title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (title VII) \3\
and that have 100 or more employees are required to file the workforce
demographic data.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ 42 U.S.C. 2000e, et seq.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. The 60-Day Notice: Request for Three-Year PRA Approval of Revisions
to the EEO-4
Pursuant to the PRA and OMB regulations found at 5 CFR
1320.8(d)(1), the Commission published a Notice in the Federal Register
on September 4, 2024, soliciting public comments during a 60-day period
(``60-day Notice'') on the Commission's intent to seek a three-year OMB
approval of revisions to the currently approved EEO-4. In particular,
in its 60-day Notice, the EEOC sought comments to: (1) Evaluate whether
the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper
performance of the Commission's functions, including whether the
information will have practical utility; (2) Evaluate the accuracy of
the Commission's estimate of the burden of the proposed collection of
information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions
used; (3) Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information
to be collected; and (4) Minimize the burden of the collection of
information on those who are to respond, including the use of
appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological
collection techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g.,
permitting electronic submission of responses. The 60-day Notice
comment period ended on November 4, 2024.
Based on data from the most recent EEO-4 data collection reporting
year (i.e., 2023), as well as ongoing updates by the EEOC to the EEO-4
frame (i.e., filer roster or master list), the EEOC anticipates the
total number of filers submitting an EEO-4 report may increase to 6,607
per biennial collection. Accordingly, the burden estimates in this
Notice are based on this revised estimate of the number of filers.
II. The Public Comments on the 60-Day Notice
The 60-day Notice was published in the Federal Register on
September 4, 2024.\4\ The EEOC received no comments during the public
comment period.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Available at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/09/04/2024-19743/agency-information-collection-activities-existing-collection.
\5\ Available at https://www.regulations.gov/docket/EEOC-2024-0008.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
III. Commission Decisions and Final EEOC Proposals to OMB
The EEOC Will Seek Three-Year Approval of Revisions to the Currently
Approved EEO-4 State and Local Government Information Report
The Commission has decided it will seek a three-year approval by
OMB of revisions to the EEO-4 State and Local Government Information
Report as described in this Notice.
IV. Formal Paperwork Reduction Act Statement
A. Overview of Information Collection
Collection Title: State and Local Government Information Report
(EEO-4).
OMB Number: 3046-0008.
Frequency of Report: Biennial.
Type of Respondent: State and local governments that have 100 or
more employees and meet certain criteria.
Description of Affected Public: State and local governments that
have 100 or more employees and meet certain criteria.
Reporting Hours: 18,094 hours per biennial collection.
Respondent Burden Hour Cost: $563,868.27 per biennial collection.
Federal Cost: $327,440.12 per biennial collection.
Number of Filers: 6,607 per biennial collection.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ This figure is based on the expanded frame of potentially
eligible respondents and the response rate for the most recently
completed EEO-4 data collection (the 2023 EEO-4 data collection).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Responses: 6,607 per biennial collection.
Number of Forms: 1.
Form Number: EEOC Form 164.
Abstract: Section 709(c) of title VII requires employers to make
and keep
[[Page 96964]]
records relevant to the determination of whether unlawful employment
practices have been or are being committed, to preserve such records,
and to produce reports as the Commission prescribes by regulation or
order.\7\ Pursuant to this statutory authority, the EEOC issued
regulations prescribing the reporting and related record retention
requirements for State and local governments.\8\ The regulations
require State and local governments to make or keep all records
necessary for completion of an EEO-4 submission and retain those
records for three years, and also require EEO-4 filers to retain a copy
of each filed EEO-4 report for three years. These recordkeeping
requirements are part of standard administrative practices, and as a
result, the EEOC believes that any impact on burden would be negligible
and nearly impossible to quantify. Additionally, the regulations
require State and local governments to file executed copies of the EEO-
4 in conformity with the directions set forth in the form and
accompanying instructions. Under this authority, State and local
governments with 100 or more employees are required to report
biennially \9\ the number of individuals they employ by job category
and by sex, salary band, and race or ethnicity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ 42 U.S.C. 2000e-8(c).
\8\ The regulatory sections covered by this notice are 29 CFR
1602.30 and 1602.32 through 1602.37. The EEOC is responsible for
obtaining OMB's PRA approval for the EEO-4 report.
\9\ Beginning in 1993, the EEO-4 report has been collected
biennially in odd-numbered years. Prior to 1993, the EEO-4 report
was collected annually.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that on March 28, 2024, OMB published revisions, the
first since 1997, to its Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards
for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and
Ethnicity. See https://spd15revision.gov/. The revisions include, for
example, using a single combined race and ethnicity question and adding
Middle Eastern or North African (MENA) as a new minimum reporting
category. Federal agencies, including the EEOC, are required to bring
their data collections into compliance with these standards by March
28, 2029. Because the EEOC's current EEO-4 PRA clearance expires
January 31, 2025, the agency is not proposing updates to its collection
of race and ethnicity data under this Notice in order to provide filers
with sufficient notice of the revised standards and to give the EEOC
sufficient time to implement the revisions across its EEO collections.
The EEOC currently collects EEO-4 data electronically through a
web-based data collection application (i.e., portal) referred to as the
EEO-4 Online Filing System (OFS).\10\ Filers must submit their data
electronically to the web-based portal by either manual entry or by
uploading a data file. The individual EEO-4 reports are
confidential.\11\ The EEOC uses EEO-4 data to investigate charges of
employment discrimination against State and local governments and to
publish periodic reports on workforce demographics.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ EEO-4 filers may access the OFS through the EEOC's
dedicated EEO-4 website at www.eeocdata.org/eeo4.
\11\ All reports and any information from individual reports are
subject to the confidentiality provisions of section 709(e) of title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-8(e), as
amended (title VII), and may not be made public by the EEOC prior to
the institution of any proceeding under title VII involving the EEO-
4 data. Any EEOC employee who violates this prohibition may be found
guilty of a criminal misdemeanor and could be fined or imprisoned.
The confidentiality requirements allow the EEOC to publish only
aggregated data, and only in a manner that does not identify any
particular filer or reveal any individual employee's personal
information. With respect to other Federal agencies with a
legitimate law enforcement purpose, the EEOC gives access to
information collected under title VII only if the agencies agree in
writing to comply with the confidentiality provisions of title VII.
In addition, section 709(d) of title VII (42 U.S.C. 2000e-8(d))
provides that the EEOC shall furnish upon request and without cost
to State or local civil rights agencies information about employers
in their jurisdiction on the condition that they not make it public
prior to starting a proceeding under State or local law involving
such information. The EEOC shares EEO-4 data with Fair Employment
Practices Agencies (FEPAs) pursuant to Worksharing Agreements that
impose obligations on the contracted FEPA with respect to
confidentiality, privacy, and data security. On a case-by-case
basis, the EEOC may share EEO-4 data with a FEPA that does not have
a Worksharing Agreement, but only if that FEPA agrees to comply with
confidentiality, privacy, and data security obligations similar to
those imposed on FEPAs with Worksharing Agreements.
\12\ Any reports the EEOC publishes based on EEO-4 data include
only aggregated data that protect the confidentiality of each
employer's information, as well as the privacy of each employee's
personal information.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. Burden Statement
The EEOC's Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA)
administers the agency's data collections, including the EEO-4. Since
OEDA's creation in 2018, the EEOC has undertaken several efforts to
modernize the agency's data collections and improve the quality of data
collected. OEDA has also streamlined functions, such as providing
additional self-service options, resource materials, and an online
support message center.
As part of these ongoing modernization efforts, OEDA has undertaken
measures to enhance the agency's existing EEO-4 data frame of
potentially eligible filers and make the EEO-4 filing process more
user-friendly and less burdensome. By comparing the EEOC's 2023 EEO-4
frame to the U.S. Census Bureau's Census of Governments,\13\ OEDA
identified approximately 1,220 additional State and local governments
that may be eligible to file during the next biennial data collection.
With the addition of these filers to the EEO-4 frame and considering
response rates during the 2023 EEO-4 data collection, OEDA now
estimates 6,607 potential respondents to the agency's next EEO-4 data
collection.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ The Census of Governments is a three-phased program that
collects State and local government data every five years in years
ending in ``2'' and ``7.'' See https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/census-of-governments.html.
\14\ This estimate covers State and local governments with 100
or more employees within the 50 United States and the District of
Columbia. Please note that 6,607 respondents may ultimately turn out
to be an overestimate. Following the initial enhancement of the EEO-
4 frame, collection data may yield an unknown number of ineligible
filers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally, the EEOC proposes to update the salary bands in the
next biennial EEO-4 data collection to keep pace with inflation and
account for an increasing portion of employees falling into the highest
salary bands. The EEOC reviewed several other Federal data collections
of salaries and wages and determined that the Bureau of Labor
Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) \15\
program most closely aligns with the EEO-4. Therefore, the EEOC
proposes adopting the OEWS salary bands and will periodically update
them as appropriate. The EEOC recognizes there may be a one-time
increase in burden as filers need to update their systems to produce
reports in the new categories, but this increase is expected to be
negligible. The proposed pay bands for the next biennial EEO-4 data
collection are listed in the table below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ The Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)
program produces employment and wage estimates annually for
approximately 830 occupations. See https://www.bls.gov/oes/.
[[Page 96965]]
Table 1--Updated Salary Bands for EEO-4
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wages
Interval ---------------------------------------
Annual Hourly
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Range A......................... Under $19,240..... Under $9.25.
Range B......................... 19,240 to 24,959.. 9.25 to 11.99.
Range C......................... 24,960 to 32,239.. 12.00 to 15.49.
Range D......................... 32,240 to 41,079.. 15.50 to 19.74.
Range E......................... 41,080 to 53,039.. 19.75 to 25.49.
Range F......................... 53,040 to 68,119.. 25.50 to 32.74.
Range G......................... 68,120 to 87,359.. 32.75 to 41.99.
Range H......................... 87,360 to 112,319. 42.00 to 53.99.
Range I......................... 112,320 to 144,559 54.00 to 69.49.
Range J......................... 144,560 to 186,159 69.50 to 89.49.
Range K......................... 186,160 to 239,199 89.50 to 114.99.
Range L......................... 239,200 and over.. 115.00 and over.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The EEOC has also updated its methodology for calculating the
biennial burden of the EEO-4 to better reflect the types of personnel
responsible for preparing and filing these reports on behalf of their
employers. Based upon job titles provided during the 2023 EEO-4 data
collection by individuals completing the report within the EEO-4 OFS,
the EEOC has identified six specific job categories which account for
the largest amount of time spent biennially on EEO-4 reporting. These
job categories include: (1) Human Resource Specialists; (2) Executive-
Level Staff; (3) Secretaries and Administrative Assistants; (4)
Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks; (5) Administrative
Services and Facilities Managers; and (6) Database Administrators and
Architects.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Hourly wage rates for these six job categories were
obtained from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook. See https://www.bls.gov/ooh/. Please note that the actual job titles reported
during the 2023 EEO-4 data collection were collapsed into these six
BLS occupational categories.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additionally, the EEO-4 OFS captures detailed information on when
each filer starts and certifies its report. The EEOC used this
information from the most recent EEO-4 data collection to calculate
more precise burden hour estimates.\17\ In Table 2 below, the estimated
average hour burden per report is 2.7 hours. The total estimated
biennial respondent burden for all filers is 18,094 hours. The
estimated average burden hour cost per report is $85.34, and the
estimated total burden hour cost for all filers per biennial collection
is $563,868.27.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\17\ The time estimates are based on the average time elapsed
among filers who completed their report during the same calendar day
within the EEO-4 OFS. This methodology was chosen because a single-
session submission would also approximate the completion time over
several, multi-day sessions.
Table 2--Projected Burden for Each EEO-4 Biennial Reporting Year
[N=6,607]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent in job Median hourly Hours per Total burden Total burden
Staff job category category wage rate filer hours Cost per filer hour cost
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human Resource Specialists.............................. 68.0 $30.88 2.8 12,575 $86.46 $388,309.82
Executive-Level Staff................................... 4.1 48.12 2.6 710 125.11 34,155.58
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants............... 8.1 21.19 2.4 1,289 50.86 827,309.67
Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks............ 8.8 22.05 2.5 1,450 55.13 31,972.50
Administrative Services and Facilities Managers......... 4.5 48.98 3.4 1,003 166.53 49,126.94
Database Administrators and Architects.................. 0.1 53.91 0.5 3 26.96 134.78
Other \a\............................................... 6.3 30.86 2.5 1,065 77.14 32,858.98
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Average............................................. .............. .............. 2.7 .............. 85.34 ..............
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total \b\........................................... 100.0 .............. .............. 18,094 .............. 563,868.27
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\a\ The average hourly wage rate for the ``Other'' category was derived by taking the weighted mean average of the hourly wage rates of the six BLS job
categories listed in the above table.
\b\ These estimates are based upon filers' use of the EEO-4 OFS to submit reports electronically because paper submissions are no longer accepted.
Electronic filing remains the most efficient, accurate, and secure means of reporting for respondents required to submit the EEO-4 report.
Dated: December 2, 2024.
For the Commission.
Charlotte A. Burrows,
Chair.
[FR Doc. 2024-28580 Filed 12-5-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6570-01-P