When We Stop Measuring, We Stop Seeing

On July 21, 2026, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to rescind federal equal employment opportunity (EEO) data reporting requirements, including employers’ long-standing requirements to report workforce demographic data by job category, sex, and race or ethnicity.

Eliminating the long-standing requirement for large employers to report workforce demographic data is a significant setback for civil rights, workplace accountability, and public transparency. For more than 60 years, these reports have provided an essential tool for understanding who has access to opportunity—and who does not—across all levels of the workforce, from executive leadership to the lowest-paid positions. The purpose of collecting race, ethnicity, gender, and job category data has never been simply to compile statistics; it has been to identify systemic patterns of discrimination against any group of American citizens, measure progress toward equal opportunity, and inform efforts to eliminate barriers to employment and advancement.

Without reliable demographic data, it becomes far more difficult to identify patterns of discrimination, enforce civil rights laws, or hold employers accountable for fair employment practices. Transparency is not an obstacle to fairness—it is a prerequisite for it. Ignoring race and gender disparities does not make them disappear. Meaningful progress requires a race-conscious understanding of where inequities exist and whether efforts to address them are working. When policymakers, researchers, employers, and the public lose access to this information, our ability to understand and address persistent inequities is diminished.

At the Community Coalition on Race, we have long relied on demographic data to help our community understand who we are, how we are changing, and where inequities and disparities persist in order to obtain outcomes beneficial to all who reside in our community. Accurate, publicly available data is essential for informed decision-making, meaningful public dialogue, and accountability. The elimination of this reporting requirement sets a troubling precedent that could weaken the collection and public availability of the demographic data that communities depend on to understand changing populations, identify disparities, and make informed decisions. We are particularly concerned that actions like this could erode public confidence in—and support for—the collection of demographic data through the U.S. Census and other government sources. Without reliable demographic data, communities, researchers, policymakers, and advocates lose one of the most important tools for identifying disparities, measuring progress, and ensuring equal opportunity for all. A healthy democracy depends on the free flow of accurate public information, and decisions that reduce transparency make it harder for communities to understand themselves and to address the inequities that still exist.