California Pay Data Report
The California pay data report is an annual filing that requires private employers with 100 or more employees and at least one California employee to report workforce headcount, pay and hours by establishment, job category, pay band, race or ethnicity, and sex - including the mean and median hourly rate for every group. It's due on the second Wednesday of May each year.
There are two separate reports with two separate triggers, and the requirements are changing significantly for the next filing cycle.
Who has to file?
Two filings, two independent tests. You may owe one, the other, or both.
| Report | You must file if you have |
|---|---|
| Payroll Employee Report | 100+ employees total - counted inside and outside California - and at least one employee in California |
| Labor Contractor Employee Report | 100+ labor contractor employees, aggregated across all contractors, and at least one in California |
Counting rules that catch people:
- Part-time counts the same as full-time. No pro-rating.
- Employees on family, medical or pregnancy leave count.
- The threshold is met if you had 100+ either during your snapshot period or regularly during the reporting year.
- Affiliated entities that operate as an integrated enterprise aggregate toward the threshold.
That first row is the one most often misread. It is not 100 California employees. It is 100 employees anywhere, plus a single Californian.
When is it due?
The second Wednesday of May, every year.
| Reporting year | Due |
|---|---|
| 2025 | Wednesday 13 May 2026 (passed) |
| 2026 | Wednesday 12 May 2027 |
The portal typically opens in early February - it opened 2 February for the most recent cycle. There is no live general deferral mechanism; a page describing one still circulates in search results but refers to a one-off arrangement from 2021 under the agency's former name.
What's the snapshot period?
A single pay period of your choosing between 1 October and 31 December of the reporting year.
The snapshot determines only which employees appear in the report. It does not determine their pay or hours - those are reported for the full calendar year. That mismatch is a persistent source of confusion and a genuine data-engineering problem: you're selecting a population from a pay period in Q4 and then attaching full-year earnings and hours to it.
What data is required?
Job categories - 10 for reporting year 2025: executive or senior level officials and managers; first or mid-level officials and managers; professionals; technicians; sales workers; administrative support workers; craft workers; operatives; laborers and helpers; service workers.
This changes to 23 occupational major groups beginning with reporting year 2026 - the reports due in May 2027. See below.
Pay bands - 12, running from $19,239 and under to $239,200 and over, based on annual earnings as reported in Box 5 of the W-2.
Race and ethnicity - 8 categories, including Middle Eastern or North African as a category distinct from White.
Sex - 3 categories: female, male, and non-binary.
Mean and median hourly rate, calculated within each employee group - meaning each unique combination of establishment, job category, pay band, race or ethnicity, and sex. Mean is the sum of individual hourly rates divided by headcount, to two decimals. Median is the middle value, or the average of the two middle values.
Total hours worked per pay band.
Remote work status, in three buckets: not remote, remote and located in California, remote and located outside California. A remote worker is someone entirely remote with no expectation of regularly reporting in person. Hybrid workers are not remote for this purpose.
Three fields added for reporting year 2025:
| Field | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Exemption status | Exempt or non-exempt, under California wage orders and/or federal law |
| Employment type | Full-time, part-time, or intermittent |
| Total annual weeks worked | Aggregate weeks worked in the year, including paid time off |
Each new field multiplies the number of distinct employee groups. Combined with the existing dimensions, a mid-sized multi-establishment employer can easily generate thousands of rows.
The labor contractor report
One consolidated report covering all labor contractors - not one report per contractor. It must include each contractor's name and federal employer identification number, each contractor's own snapshot period, and only the portion of each worker's earnings attributable to you as the client employer.
The practical difficulty is that you're reporting data you don't hold, about workers who aren't in your systems, obtained from third parties who have no direct filing obligation of their own.
What are the penalties?
Civil penalties of up to $100 per employee for an initial failure to file and up to $200 per employee for a subsequent failure. At 500 employees, that's $50,000 and $100,000.
These penalties are no longer discretionary. Legislation signed in October 2025 changed the statute so that a court shall impose the penalty on the agency's request, where previously it may. The agency can also seek a court order compelling compliance and recover the cost of obtaining it.
Penalties can also reach labor contractors that fail to supply required data to the client employer.
What changes for the next filing cycle
Three changes from the October 2025 legislation, all landing on the report due in May 2027:
1. Job categories go from 10 to 23. This is the largest change in the law's history. It means re-mapping every job in your workforce against a materially more granular classification scheme. Almost no published guidance addresses it yet, and the work needs to start well before the filing window opens.
2. Demographic data must be stored separately from personnel records. Any demographic information gathered for this filing must be collected and stored separately from employees' personnel files. For many employers that is a systems change, not a policy change.
3. Penalties become mandatory, as above.
Where teams actually lose time
Weeks worked including paid time off. PTO records frequently live outside payroll, so this single field can't be pulled from one system.
Exemption status is now externally visible. Misclassification that used to sit quietly in HR records now appears in a filing to a state civil rights agency. That reframes the report: it isn't only a reporting obligation, it's a disclosure that can surface wage-and-hour exposure.
"Intermittent" has no standard definition across HR platforms. Employers are making an unguided judgment call.
Deriving an hourly rate for salaried staff so that mean and median can be computed within each group.
W-2 Box 5 is not what most compensation systems store, so the pay band assignment requires a derived figure rather than a stored one.
Small-cell handling. As dimensions multiply, groups get smaller, and validating thousands of thin rows becomes its own project.
Frequently asked questions
Does the 100-employee threshold mean 100 California employees?
No. It's 100 employees total, counted inside and outside California, plus at least one California employee.
Do part-time employees count toward the threshold?
Yes, the same as full-time.
When exactly is it due?
The second Wednesday of May. For reporting year 2026, that's 12 May 2027.
Can we get an extension?
There is no general deferral mechanism currently in place. Pages describing one refer to a one-off arrangement from 2021.
Which pay period should we use for the snapshot?
Any single pay period between 1 October and 31 December of the reporting year. It determines which employees are included, not their pay or hours.
Are hybrid employees reported as remote?
No. Remote means entirely remote with no expectation of regularly reporting in person.
Do we file one report per labor contractor?
No - one consolidated report covering all of them, listing each contractor's name and identification number.
What happens if we don't file?
Up to $100 per employee for a first failure and $200 per employee after that, and those penalties are now mandatory rather than discretionary.
What's changing in 2027?
Job categories go from 10 to 23, demographic data must be stored separately from personnel records, and penalties become mandatory.
This guide is general information about reporting requirements, not legal advice. Verify current deadlines, thresholds and penalty amounts against the issuing agency before you file.