The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is set to stop collecting demographic data from companies through its EEO-1 reports, ending a data collection system that has underpinned anti-discrimination enforcement for six decades. Experts and former commission staff warn that without this information, it will become far harder to identify patterns of workplace discrimination in hiring and promotion, and that the move represents a broader shift of the agency away from independent civil rights enforcement towards the priorities of the Trump administration.

The EEO-1 reports require companies to submit staff data broken down by race, ethnicity, sex and job title, and are the only data collection of their kind, revealing trends such as the proportion of women in senior roles or the racial makeup of a firm's lowest-paid workers. The majority-Republican commission is expected to approve their termination this autumn, following claims from Trump-appointed commissioner Andrea Lucas that the data collection is unconstitutional, burdensome and encourages discrimination against white workers. Critics, including the National Women's Law Center, argue the change is part of a wider effort to weaponise civil rights law, noting the EEOC already receives nearly 90,000 discrimination complaints annually and relies on EEO-1 data to target its now severely reduced enforcement resources, with staffing at a 45-year low.