The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has issued a new directive to provide guidance to employers when filling out their Employer Information Report, or EEO-1.  Certain private employers and federal government contractors are required to file an EEO-1 report annually, which details its employees’ job categories, race, ethnicity, and gender.

In November 2005, the EEOC, in conjunction with the OFCCP, finalized a revised EEO-1 report form, which contains different descriptions of race, ethnicity, and job categories.  For instance, while the old EEO-1 plan provides a race and ethnicity category for “Hispanic,” the revised form includes a category for “Hispanic or Latino.”  The OFCCP’s new directive is an attempt to reconcile the revised EEO-1 report and the now-outdated OFCCP regulations that have not yet been changed to reflect the new EEO-1 categories.

The new directive clarifies that federal contractors will not be cited for noncompliance for using either the old or new EEO-1 race and ethnicity categories when preparing their affirmative action plans and provides further guidance on the use of the new categories in specific affirmative action plan requirements such as workforce, job group, utilization and other analyses.

The filing deadline for the EEO-1 report is September 30, 2008.