Coverage thresholds, what has to be disclosed and filed, by when, and what happens if it isn’t — for employers with people in California.
California is the only state in the country that requires private employers to file annual pay data with a civil rights regulator. That single fact reshapes how a California compensation programme has to be built.
Employers with 15 or more employees, with at least one located in California, must state the pay scale in the posting itself.
Employers with 100+ payroll employees, or 100+ labor contractor employees, file annually with the Civil Rights Department.
The pay data reporting threshold is 100 or more payroll employees, or 100 or more labor contractor employees. The count includes employees working inside and outside California, part-time employees, and employees on paid or unpaid leave. That last point catches a lot of employers out: a company with 30 people in California and 90 elsewhere is in scope.
The posting requirement is separate and lower — 15 or more employees, with at least one currently located in California. A third obligation, disclosure of the pay scale on request, applies to all employers with no size threshold: to an applicant who has completed an interview, and to a current employee for their own position.
Three new data fields were first required for Reporting Year 2025: exemption status (exempt or non-exempt under the IWC wage orders and/or the FLSA), employment type (full-time, part-time, or intermittent), and total annual weeks worked, including paid time off. Pay bands are built on W-2 Box 5 earnings.
RY2025 reports were due 13 May 2026. RY2026 reports are due 12 May 2027.
SB 464 replaces the ten EEO-1 job categories with 23 SOC-based job categories, effective 1 January 2027 and first applying to the RY2026 report due May 2027.
This is the single largest piece of work on the California horizon and it is widely underestimated. Remapping an entire workforce from 10 buckets to 23 is a job architecture exercise, not a reporting exercise — and the mapping you choose determines which employees are compared against which. Employers who leave it to the quarter before filing will be making structural decisions under deadline pressure.
Effective 1 January 2026, SB 642 also amended Labor Code § 1197.5. The statute of limitations moved to three years for all violations with a six-year recovery cap; “opposite sex” became “another sex,” extending coverage to non-binary and gender identity claims; and “wages” is now defined to include all forms of pay — salary, overtime, bonuses, stock, stock options, profit sharing, life insurance, vacation, holiday pay, allowances, accommodation, and travel reimbursement.
That last change matters more than it reads. An equity grant is now squarely inside the equal pay analysis. Most pay equity studies we see still run on base salary alone.
Job title and wage rate history must be retained for each employee for the duration of employment plus three years, open to Labor Commissioner inspection. New under SB 464 from 1 January 2026: demographic data collected for pay data reporting must be stored separately from personnel records.
We support California employers on the compensation side of this — pay equity analysis, range architecture, and how executive pay reads inside a filing or a published range. We are not attorneys and this page is not legal advice; the filings themselves are usually handled with employment counsel.
For advisory work in the region, see our Los Angeles executive compensation page.
For the purpose of counting to the 100-employee threshold, yes — employees inside and outside California count, as do part-time employees and those on leave. The report itself covers employees assigned to California establishments and those working remotely who report to a California establishment.
SB 464 replaces the ten EEO-1 job categories with 23 SOC-based categories effective 1 January 2027, first applying to the Reporting Year 2026 report due 12 May 2027. It is a job architecture exercise rather than a reporting one, because the mapping determines which employees are compared against which. It is worth starting well before the filing quarter.
Generally yes, where the role could be performed in California or reports into a California supervisor, office or worksite. The specifics vary — some states test on where the work is performed, others on the reporting line, and several catch out-of-state employers recruiting locally-based remote staff. Check the coverage language above against your own arrangements rather than assuming a headquarters test.
No. It is a compensation practitioner's summary of published requirements, current as at July 2026, intended to help you scope the compensation work these obligations create. Pay legislation in this area has been amended frequently and several provisions carry sunset dates. Confirm current requirements with employment counsel before acting.
Pay equity analysis and range architecture, sequenced so findings can be acted on rather than merely disclosed.
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