Trump Wants to Stop Tracking Job Data by Race and Sex. This Is Why.

Just how diverse is corporate America? For decades, it has been the federal government’s job to keep track.

Each year, major companies submit a breakdown of employees by race and gender in a form popularly known as an EEO-1 report. Since the 1960s, this trove of demographic data has been instrumental in spotting patterns of discrimination and supporting civil rights investigations in the workplace.

Not for much longer. The Trump administration has signaled it’s putting a stop to it as part of its diversity, equity and inclusion reforms.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission notified the White House last week that it plans to eliminate the reporting requirement for corporations as well as labor unions, state and local governments, apprenticeship programs and schools, marking a significant escalation in the fight over corporate diversity.

In recent years, EEO-1 data gave Americans greater visibility into how level the playing field is in their workplace, and critics warn cutting off this information flow will make it harder for corporations and regulators to gauge that. The Trump White House argues this is just the latest in a series of necessary steps to unwind Biden-era policies that unfairly promoted favored groups over others.

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Information tracking the state of diversity in the American workplace won’t go away entirely. States like California and Illinois still require employers to submit workforce demographics reports. If the federal government stops collecting EEO-1 data, more states may enact similar reporting requirements. But little else stands in the EEOC’s way, legal observers say.

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The public had scant access to these reports until the 2020 police killing of George Floyd when corporations began voluntarily releasing more information in the face of growing pressure from investors and customers and inquiries from news organizations like USA TODAY.

Three-quarters of S&P 500 companies disclosed EEO-1 data for 2022 and 2023, according to Josh Ramer, founder of PeopleReturn, which provides data and research on workforce trends in public companies.

But corporations retreated as the DEI backlash accelerated when President Donald Trump took office for his second term. In 2024, the latest year for which EEO-1 data is available, that figure dropped to about 57%, Ramer said.

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