Yesterday, the California Civil Rights Department published answers to frequently asked questions on SB 1162, a law enacted last year requiring staffing agencies to report to the state temporary employees’ annual “pay data” by race, ethnicity, and sex, and also requiring staffing agency clients to submit separate reports covering the employees provided by staffing agencies.

The FAQs follow a Nov. 8, 2022, meeting between ASA representatives and Adam Romero, deputy director of executive programs for CRD. The purpose of the meeting was to clarify several items of importance to the staffing industry. ASA asserted that SB 1162 requires employers (staffing agencies and clients) to report on staffing agency temporary employees assigned during a particular snapshot period, rather than all employees who were assigned within a year. ASA also requested relief from having to provide race, ethnicity, and sex data on employees for the 2022 reporting year, given that the industry has never had to provide such data and most agencies do not have processes in place for obtaining it.

The FAQs favorably reflect input from ASA. They confirm that staffing agencies and clients must report pay data only for a single “snapshot period,” or pay period, between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of each reporting year. CRD encourages staffing agencies and their clients to collaborate on selecting a snapshot period for pay data reporting purposes. Thus, staffing agencies and clients should work together to select a snapshot period, occurring between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, for the 2023 filing deadline of May 10, 2023.

Second, for reporting year 2022, staffing agencies and clients can report “unknown” with respect to temporary employees’ race, ethnicity, and gender, where that information is indeed unknown and not reasonably obtainable before the filing deadline. The FAQs add that staffing agencies and clients should not expect this option in the future, and that they should implement plans to obtain accurate information from employees for subsequent reporting years.

The FAQs also clarify the threshold for determining whether staffing firms and clients are required to submit reports. The FAQs note that if a staffing agency either (a) had 100 or more employees in the snapshot period, or (b) regularly had 100 or more employees during the reporting year, it is required to submit a pay data report. Similarly, the FAQs note that if a client either (a) had 100 or more labor contractor (temporary) employees in the snapshot period—in total from all of its staffing agencies (the FAQs and law refer to such agencies as “labor contractors”), or (b) regularly had 100 or more temporary employees during the reporting year, it is required to submit a labor contractor employee report.

ASA will host an exclusive webinar on the FAQS, featuring CRD representatives, in the coming weeks.