New Jersey: Equal Pay Act Reporting Requirements Revised for Public Works Employers

A recent revision made by the New Jersey Department of Labor (NJ DOL) clarified Equal Pay Act data reporting requirements.  According to the NJ DOL, employers that provide services to public works for the state of New Jersey do not need to report equal pay data for all employees—just employees who perform the public work or provide qualifying services.

Last year, the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act made it a requirement for employers who perform public works or provide qualifying services to the state of New Jersey to annually report pay data.  Covered employers are required to complete a number of mandatory reporting forms each year and submit the data by March 31^st of the following year.

The NJ DOL has modified the “Instructions for Completing the Payroll Certification for Public Work Projects and the Annual Equal Pay Report for Qualifying Services Other than Public Works Projects.”  Key changes to the Instructions include the following: first, employers are no longer required to identify individual employees by name in the annual reporting.  Instead, individuals in each job category are identified by sex, race, ethnicity, FLSA status, and compensation pay band.  Second, the requirement to identify all employees in the organization, regardless of whether or not the employee performed any services related to the public work, has been eliminated.  Employers are only required to report data on employees who are connected with a contract to perform the public work.