By Benjamin Kerner
BLOG OVERVIEW: California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Senate Bill 464 into law. This bill will require employers to use more new, more granular job categories for California Pay Data Reporting in future years and includes mandatory penalties for failures to file, as well as a new recordkeeping requirement.
On October 13, 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced in a legislative update that he had signed Senate Bill 464 (SB 464) into law, introducing two new reporting requirements effective in 2026 and a third significant change taking effect in 2027. These changes signal California’s continued commitment to employee data collection and analysis amid a pullback of these requirements at the federal level.
New Requirements in 2026:
SB 464 includes two new requirements that will take effect in 2026:
- Separate Recordkeeping Requirement - Employers must collect and store any demographic information gathered for the purposes of California pay reporting separately from employees’ personnel records.
- Mandatory Penalties for Non-Filing - Courts are now required to impose civil penalties against employers that fail to submit reports requested by the California Civil Rights Department (CRD). Prior to SB 464, the regulation authorized courts to impose these penalties rather than requiring them to do so. Penalties may also be levied against labor contractors that fail to provide the required data to the filing employer and CRD can recover the costs of the enforcement action. Penalties for failing to provide this reporting remain $100 per employee for the first violation and $200 per employee for subsequent infractions.
New Requirements in 2027:
The most significant changes stemming from SB 464 will take effect in with the 2027 filing cycle. Employers subject to the California pay filing will be required to use 23 job categories that correlate with Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) groups. This is a significant deviation from the currently required usage of the 10 EEO-1 categories.
Some groups will be able to be directly mapped from EEO-1 categories. However, that is not the case for most of the groupings that will be required. The list of categories required by SB 464 includes:
(A) Chief executives
(B) Management occupations, except chief executives
(C) Business and financial operations occupations
(D) Computer and mathematical occupations
(E) Architecture and engineering occupations
(F) Life, physical, and social science occupations
(G) Community and social science occupations
(H) Legal occupations
(I) Educational instruction and library occupations
(J) Art, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations
(K) Health care practitioners and technical occupations
(L) Health care support occupations
(M) Protective service occupations
(N) Food preparation and serving-related occupations
(O) Building and ground cleaning and maintenance occupations
(P) Personal care and service occupations
(Q) Sales and related occupations
(R) Office and administrative support occupations
(S) Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
(T) Construction and extraction occupations
(U) Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations
(V) Production occupations
(W) Transportation and material moving occupations
This shift will likely require significant effort for organizations to remap their job titles to these more granular categories. Employers should consider doing so before 2027 to ensure sufficient time for validation and system updates.
Looking Ahead
Previous versions of this bill included provisions requiring the reporting of employee gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status, and veteran status. While these demographic categories were not included in the final version, it is possible that they will be added in future reporting periods.
DCI will continue to monitor the legislative activities within the state of California, as well as states looking to adopt similar programs and requirements.
