California’s annual pay data reporting submission this year is due on May 13, 2026. Each cycle, the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) typically releases updated guidance for that year’s reporting in early February.
While we await this annual guidance, CRD has already provided preliminary templates for payroll employee and labor contractor pay data reporting and related Frequently Asked Questions. These preliminary templates are intended to be simplified versions of the final filing templates to help employers get familiar with the format and data fields in advance of the reporting deadline. Though neither final nor compelled by regulation, the preliminary templates reflect material changes to this year’s data collection.
The headline: CRD adds three mandatory data fields to the pay data report:
These fields apply across both the Payroll Employee reports and the Labor Contractor Employee reports.
In addition to receiving compensation data organized by job category, pay band, race/ethnicity, and sex, the updates further break out the submission by exemption status and employment type.
Exemption Status
Employers must classify each California employee as either “exempt” or “non‑exempt” from minimum wage and overtime requirements under California wage orders and/or the Fair Labor Standards Act.
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