California pay data reporting: who files, the 2026 deadline, and how SB 464 changed it
California pay data reporting is the annual filing that private employers with 100 or more employees send to the state Civil Rights Department, breaking down pay, hours and demographics by job category, race or ethnicity, and sex. For reporting year 2025 it is due May 13, 2026, the second Wednesday of May. It is a separate duty from the job posting pay scale rule, and since SB 464 the penalties for skipping it are no longer optional.
This guide covers who is over the threshold, the two reports you may owe, the exact data fields, the snapshot period, and the three SB 464 changes that matter for 2026 and 2027. It is written for HR and people ops leads at companies that just crossed 100 employees and are filing for the first time. It is general information, not legal advice.
Who has to file
Two separate coverage tests, and you can be caught by either:
| Report | Who owes it | Counts |
|---|---|---|
| Payroll Employee Report | Private employers with 100 or more payroll employees | All employees on payroll, counted nationwide, if at least one works in California |
| Labor Contractor Employee Report | Client employers with 100 or more labor contractor employees | Workers hired through staffing agencies and other labor contractors, same nationwide basis |
The trap in the count is the word nationwide. A company with 60 employees in California and 55 in three other states has 115 payroll employees and files, even though no single state office hits 100. The threshold is total headcount as long as one employee sits in California. The same logic applies to remote workers assigned to a California establishment.
The 2026 deadline and the snapshot
The report for reporting year 2025 is due May 13, 2026. The deadline is fixed as the second Wednesday of May, so it moves by a day or two each year but never leaves that week. There is no automatic extension; enforcement deferral requests go through the Civil Rights Department, not around it.
Headcount is measured on a snapshot, not year-round. You choose a single pay period between October 1 and December 31 of the reporting year, count who was employed during it, and build the whole report from that population. Pick the snapshot before you pull data, because it defines which employees are in scope for every field that follows.
What data the report contains
The report is not a list of individuals. It groups employees and reports counts and pay statistics for each combination of establishment, job category, race or ethnicity, and sex. For every group you supply:
- the number of employees in that group;
- the pay band each falls into, using the state's defined bands;
- total hours worked by the group during the reporting year;
- the mean and median hourly rate for the group.
The mean and median hourly rate requirement, added by SB 1162 in 2022, is the part that turns this from a headcount exercise into a pay analysis. The state can see, group by group, where median pay diverges by sex or race inside the same job category and establishment. That is also why filing without looking at your own numbers first is a mistake: the report is a pay equity signal you are handing a regulator, so you want to have read it before they do.
What SB 464 changed for 2026 and 2027
SB 464, signed in October 2025, is the reason this filing needs fresh attention rather than a copy of last year's process. Three changes:
| Change | Effect | Starts |
|---|---|---|
| Mandatory penalties | A court shall impose up to $100 per employee for a first failure to file and up to $200 per employee after that. The discretion to waive is gone. | Reports due in 2026 |
| Separate data storage | The demographic data used for the report must be collected and stored separately from personnel files. | 2026 |
| SOC job categories | Reporting moves off the EEO-1 categories and onto 23 job categories based on the Standard Occupational Classification system. | January 1, 2027 |
The penalty change is the one to brief your leadership on. A 300-person company that misses a filing is now looking at a mandatory penalty that can reach $30,000, with a repeat failure doubling the per-employee figure, and the court no longer has room to let it slide. The separate-storage rule pushes most teams toward keeping a standing pay and demographic dataset year-round rather than reconstructing one each spring. And the 2027 switch to SOC categories means the mapping work you do this year gets redone once, so it is worth documenting how you classified each role now.
How to prepare the report without a fire drill
The filing itself is a template upload through the Civil Rights Department portal. The work is getting to a clean dataset. A workable sequence:
- Pick the Oct 1 to Dec 31 snapshot pay period and freeze the population.
- Pull pay, hours and self-reported demographics for that population. If headcount lives across a payroll system and a separate HRIS, you may need to connect the two data sources before you can build one clean row per employee.
- Map every role to the correct job category (EEO-1 for 2026, and start noting the SOC code for 2027).
- Compute the group counts, pay bands, total hours, and mean and median hourly rate.
- Read the medians yourself before you file, so nothing in the report surprises you later.
That last step is where pay data reporting connects to the rest of your comp work. A median that looks wrong is usually one of two things: a genuine pay gap, or a salary band that drifted out of date. The way to tell them apart is a pay equity audit run against current market ranges, ideally a quarter before you file rather than the week of the deadline.
Frequently asked questions
Who has to file a California pay data report?
Private employers with 100 or more payroll employees, and client employers using 100 or more labor contractor employees. The count is nationwide headcount, not just California, as long as at least one employee works in the state.
When is the California pay data report due in 2026?
May 13, 2026 for reporting year 2025. The deadline is always the second Wednesday of May, filed through the Civil Rights Department portal rather than with the EEOC.
What did SB 464 change?
It made penalties mandatory (up to $100 per employee for a first failure, $200 after), required demographic data to be stored separately from personnel files, and, from January 1, 2027, replaced the EEO-1 job categories with 23 SOC-based categories.
What is the difference between pay data reporting and pay transparency?
Pay transparency is the job posting pay scale duty and it starts at 15 employees. Pay data reporting is the annual filing to the state and it starts at 100. The California pay transparency rules cover the posting side in full.
What data goes in the report?
For each establishment, job category, race or ethnicity and sex group: the number of employees, their pay band, total hours worked, and the mean and median hourly rate. The headcount comes from a snapshot pay period between October 1 and December 31.
Is there a penalty for not filing?
Yes, and since 2026 it is mandatory. A court shall impose up to $100 per employee for a first failure and up to $200 per employee for later ones, so a 300-person company can face a $30,000 penalty for a single missed filing.
The report is a checkup you file with the state
Pay data reporting is less about the upload and more about what the medians say. Companies that treat it as a spring compliance chore keep rediscovering the same gaps; companies that keep a standing, market-anchored comp dataset file in an afternoon and already know what the numbers show. If you are filing for the first time, build the pay bands first, check your group medians against them, and let the report confirm what you already fixed rather than reveal what you missed. The same bands feed your posted salary ranges, so one structure covers both California duties at once.