In a public comment submitted to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on August 24, 2026, the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) objected to the agency’s proposal to eliminate the EEO-1 reporting requirement, which requires employers with more than 100 employees to file demographic data on an annual basis.
AAJA agrees with the Institute of Nonprofit News (INN) that, in addition to helping companies recognize barriers in their own hiring and promotion practices, the report allows journalists to identify companies where discriminatory outcomes may result even without intentional bias. The report is especially critical in newsrooms, whose credibility depends on reflecting the communities they serve and where journalists of color continue to face barriers to representation and advancement.
AAJA’s comment:
The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) strongly opposes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s proposal to eliminate the annual EEO-1 reporting requirement for employers, a key tool for promoting American workplace transparency and accountability. By providing standardized demographic data on employees by race, ethnicity, sex, and job category, the EEO-1 report is foundational to EEOC’s function of investigating discriminatory hiring practices and enforcing key federal hiring and labor laws that prohibit employment discrimination.
AAJA strongly disagrees with the Commission’s argument that the EEO-1 is unnecessary for enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws, and that the benefits of the report are “limited” and outweighed by the administrative burden on employers. The annual reporting of standardized demographic data is critical to identifying disparities, measuring progress and advancing workplace equity.
The EEO-1 report is especially important for the news industry. Asian American journalists and other journalists of color still face barriers to representation and advancement in an industry whose credibility depends on reflecting and understanding the communities it serves. Eliminating EEO-1 would remove one of the few standardized ways to track workplace disparities, including in newsrooms. Without that data, we lose one of the clearest measures of representation, accountability and progress.
AAJA urges the Commission to preserve annual EEO-1 reporting. Requiring demographic data reporting serves not only employers and workers, but the broader public interest in transparent, equitable, and accountable workplaces.
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