California Pay Data Reporting:
2026 cycle update (Reporting Year 2025)

If you file California pay data reports, this is your early heads‑up: Reporting Year 2025 reports are due May 13, 2026, and the Civil Rights Department (CRD) is already publishing prep materials so teams can get ahead of the scramble.

CRD has released preliminary templates and a companion FAQ as a preview of what the 2026 filing cycle will require. These templates are for planning only and are not meant to be submitted.

Here’s what changed in practical terms.

CRD says that for Reporting Year 2025, pay data reports should include three new fields: exemption status, employment type, and weeks worked during the reporting year. In other words, your “reporting” work just became a systems problem, because those fields often live across HRIS, payroll, and time tools.

CRD also notes the pay data portal will open in February 2026, and that’s when CRD plans to post the operative templates and other filing resources for Reporting Year 2025.

This matters most for any organization that meets California’s threshold for reporting. CRD’s pay data reporting program applies to private employers with 100+ employees and/or 100+ workers hired through labor contractors.

What we recommend doing now, before February: run a quick “data readiness” check. Confirm where the truth lives for exemption status, employment type, and weeks worked, and whether you can export those fields cleanly by employee without manual patching. If you can’t, the time cost shows up later as reconciliation work and last‑minute fixes.

One more important note: CRD’s preliminary FAQ is informational and explicitly not legal advice. If you have legal interpretation questions, you’ll want counsel involved.

People Street’s take: the teams that handle this best treat pay data reporting like a recurring operating cadence, not an annual fire drill. That’s exactly what we install: clean HRIS foundations plus the ongoing People Ops rhythm that keeps payroll, benefits, onboarding, and reporting clean as you grow.