EEO-1 reporting for a NEMT company: the 100-employee line, counting drivers, and where the filing stands

Who has to file the EEO-1 report?

A private employer covered by Title VII with 100 or more employees has to file it. The EEO-1 Component 1 report is a headcount of your employees by job category, sex, and race or ethnicity, sent to the EEOC. The rule is 29 CFR 1602.7. Title VII reaches a company at 15 employees, so a NEMT company can be covered by the discrimination laws for years before this report applies. The posters guide and the guide to hiring your first employee cover the thresholds that arrive earlier.

Commonly owned companies are added together. The EEOC’s instructions say a company with fewer than 100 employees must still file when it is affiliated with another employer, or shares ownership, control, or management with one, and the group has 100 or more employees. As an example, an owner who runs a 64-employee ride company and a separate 41-employee billing company has a 105-employee enterprise, even though neither company alone is close.

Is the EEO-1 still being collected?

The law has not changed, but nothing is open to file right now. On October 6, 2026 the EEOC’s data collections page lists the 2024 collection as closed and says updates on the 2025 collection will be posted when they are available. It gives no opening date and no deadline.

The last window is the best guide to timing. The 2024 booklet scheduled the collection to open on May 20, 2025, with a published due date of 11:00 p.m. Eastern on June 24, 2025. The regulation’s own date, September 30, is not the one the EEOC has been using. Each collection sets its own window.

The EEOC has also proposed to end the report. Its proposal to remove the EEO-1 and the other EEO reports, along with the recordkeeping rules tied to them, was published on July 23, 2026 (91 FR 46332). The agency says it preliminarily finds the reports inconsistent with equal employment opportunity law and potentially unconstitutional, and it estimates about 110,000 employers are affected. A public hearing was set for August 11, and comments closed on August 24, 2026. No final rule had been published as of October 5, 2026, and until one is, 29 CFR 1602.7 stays on the books.

Federal contractors had a second path. A contractor with 50 or more employees and a contract of $50,000 or more had to file under the Labor Department’s rule at 41 CFR 60-1.7, which came from Executive Order 11246. Executive Order 14173 revoked that order on January 21, 2025. The Labor Department’s final rule rescinding the implementing regulations was published on August 21, 2026 and takes effect October 26, 2026. It says it does not affect the EEOC’s own actions on the EEO-1. The EEOC’s page still describes the report as covering contractors with 50 or more employees who meet certain criteria, so a VA or county contractor that size should watch for a 2025 filing notice instead of assuming it is out. The contract side of that work is in the government contracts guide.

What to do now: keep the headcount data for the fourth quarter of 2025 by job category, sex, and race or ethnicity, and keep the copy of your last filed report, because 29 CFR 1602.7 requires one at each reporting unit or at headquarters. The OMB approval printed on the current instruction booklet runs out on November 30, 2026.

Who counts toward the 100?

Everyone on your payroll counts, including part-time employees. The instructions define an employee as an individual on the employer’s payroll for whom it withholds Social Security taxes. The report covers all full-time and part-time employees employed during one pay period that you pick in the fourth quarter, October 1 through December 31 of the reporting year. A person who worked at any time in that pay period counts, even if they quit or were let go during or after it.

How the common NEMT arrangements fall:

• Per-trip and per-shift drivers on W-2. They are on the payroll, so they count in the pay period they worked.
• Drivers paid on a 1099. A true independent contractor is not on the payroll and is not counted. The EEOC says its definition does not decide whether someone really is a contractor, and that question is tested under the factors in Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. v. Darden. The employee or contractor guide covers how that goes.
• Drivers from a staffing agency. For the EEO-1 only, a person on an agency’s payroll who is sent to work under your direction and control is left out of your count. For a leased employee, a permanent employee an agency supplies for a fee while it handles payroll, staffing, benefits, and compliance reporting, the instructions say the agency includes the person in its own report. The staffing agency guide explains the joint employment side.
• Remote dispatchers and billers. They count at the location they report to. If they report to no location, they count where their manager reports.

You may change the pay period from one year to the next. Since the 2023 collection, though, a company that had 100 or more employees at any time in the fourth quarter cannot choose a pay period when it dipped below 100 to avoid filing.

Which job category does a driver or dispatcher fall in?

A van driver is an Operative. The EEOC sorts every employee into one of ten job categories, and its instructions name truck, bus, and taxi drivers as examples of Operatives. The EEOC’s job classification guide maps standard occupation titles to the ten categories, and the instruction booklet points filers to it for help. Matching each role in a ride company to the closest title gives:

Vehicle cleaners and other helpers who need only brief training belong in Laborers and Helpers, which the instructions describe as jobs with limited skills and little independent judgment.

What does the report ask for, and how is it filed?

It asks for counts, not names. For each job category you report how many employees were male or female and how many fall in each race or ethnicity group. The form has only the two sex options. A company with one location files a single report. A company with a dispatch office and a separate garage is a multi-establishment employer, files a headquarters report, and files a report for each location, with every employee counted at the location they report to.

Filing is online through the EEOC’s filing system, either by typing the numbers in or by uploading a data file. The person who certifies the report must be an employee of the company. An official of a payroll or HR outsourcing company cannot certify for you. The certification carries a warning that knowingly and willfully false statements are punishable under 18 U.S.C. 1001. When a collection closes, the numbers cannot be corrected.

A company that gets a filing notice but is under the line should not ignore it. The instructions tell it to answer the eligibility questions in the filing system and certify that it is ineligible. Otherwise the EEOC keeps sending notices in later years.

What happens if a company skips it?

The EEOC can ask a federal district court to order the company to file (29 CFR 1602.9). The regulation sets no fine. In practice the cost of a miss is a different one: after a deadline passes the EEOC accepts no more reports for that year, and the instructions say an employer that misses a cycle cannot send that report in a later one. An employer that believes filing would be an undue hardship can apply in writing for an exemption under 29 CFR 1602.57, but the instructions say the application does not extend the deadline and the data must still be prepared while it is pending. The EEOC’s proposal would remove that section too.

A discrimination charge from a driver is a separate matter. The charge guide covers the response, and record retention covers how long hiring files stay.

Pulling the headcount from your own records

Picking the snapshot pay period is easier with the shift records in front of you. HealthRide’s reports show who clocked in during any week you choose, so the list of everyone who worked your snapshot week comes from your own records rather than from memory.