California Pay Data Reports Are Due May 13: Your 5-Step Employer Compliance Plan

California Pay Data Reports Are Due May 13: Your 5-Step Employer Compliance Plan

May 13 is the deadline for covered employers to file California pay data reports for 2025, and if you haven’t done so already, you’ll need a plan of action to quickly comply. And things are different this year. The reports due next week include new required data fields, and, thanks to a state law enacted last fall, penalties for reporting failures are now mandatory. We’ll cover key points you must know and give you five steps you can take to meet your reporting obligations. 

Who Must File?

You must file a pay data report with the CRD this year if you are a private employer and in 2025 you had:

• 100 or more payroll employees and at least one of them was based in California (in which case a Payroll Employee Report is due); or
• 100 or more workers hired through labor contractors and at least one of them was based in California (in which case a Labor Contractor Employee Report is due).

How Are Reports Filed?

Pay data reports must be submitted through CRD’s online pay data portal. Employers may either manually enter pay data into the portal’s fillable forms or upload a data file in accordance with the agency’s specifications. CRD has published new pay data reporting templates for the 2025 reporting cycle, which you can find here (Excel) and here (CSV).

What’s New for the 2025 Reporting Cycle?

The pay data reports due next week include three new data fields:

• Exemption Status – classification as either exempt or non-exempt for minimum wage and overtime purposes.
• Employment Type – categorized as full-time, part-time, or intermittent.
• Weeks Worked – total weeks worked during the reporting year, including any form of paid time off (such as vacation or sick leave). 

However, for Reporting Year 2025, it’s not clear whether these three new fields are optional. While CRD’s FAQs state that reports “should” include this information, these fields are not expressly listed in the statute and the agency’s template conventions appear to distinguish between required and non-required fields.

In addition, due to a new state law (SB 464) that took effect on January 1, penalties for failures to file are now mandatory upon CRD’s request. Specifically, the agency may ask a court to impose a civil penalty of up to $100 per employee, with the penalties increasing to $200 per employee for any subsequent failure to file. Previously, courts were permitted, but not required, to impose such penalties upon request.

All other California pay data reporting requirements and penalties that applied last year continue to be in effect for reports due this year.

5-Step Employer Action Plan

With the filing deadline just around the corner, now is the time to act to ensure compliance and get any questions about the new requirements answered before the deadline.

1. Determine if you must file – even if you are outside of California. Check out the “Who Must File?” section above, as well as the CRD resources mentioned below, and work with counsel if you are unsure if you have reporting obligations.

2. Use the latest CRD resources and templates. This agency website is where you can find links to the pay data portal, Handbook, User Guide, FAQs, Excel Templates, CSV Examples, and more.

3. Ensure pay data is accurate and compliant with the latest reporting changes. Maintaining precise records of employee demographics, pay data, work locations, exempt status, employment type, and hours worked is critical to meet your reporting requirements. Remember, collecting employees’ self-identified race/ethnicity information is the CRD’s preferred method of identifying such information. If an employee declines to state their race/ethnicity, you may identify this information using (in the following order):

• current employment records;
• other reliable records or information; or
• observer perception (this method should be used only after making a good faith effort to obtain race/ethnicity information from the employee or from other reliable records).

4. Timely submit pay data reports to avoid potential penalties. Make sure to electronically submit your pay data reports through CRD’s portal by May 13 to avoid the potential penalties described above. Designate the individual or team for ensuring all relevant information is gathered and the Payroll Employee and Labor Contractor Employee reports are timely filed.

5. Work with your counsel to ensure proper filing and compliance steps.

Conclusion

We will continue to monitor CRD updates on pay data reporting requirements, so make sure you are subscribed to Fisher Phillips’ Insight System to get the most up-to-date information. If you have questions, reach out to your Fisher Phillips attorney, the authors of this Insight, any attorney in our Pay Equity and Transparency Practice Group, or any attorney in our California offices.