(Bloomberg) -- New York City’s comptroller says he wants federal regulators to compel all U.S. companies to share otherwise private gender and race data, after his office played a significant role in getting most of the largest ones to do so. 

The comptroller's office, along with four of the city’s five pension funds, has persuaded 78 of the biggest companies in which they invest to make public for the first time so-called EEO-1 forms, private documents that provide granular detail about the number of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native and White men and women at every level of a company.  

The comptroller’s office said Thursday that the final 11 companies on its list have agreed to release the data to the public after negotiations, capping a campaign that started in July 2020. The four funds control about $221 billion in investments.

“From where we were two years ago, to today, is a remarkable set of progress for transparency and disclosure about race and gender demographic information at America’s largest companies,” said Brad Lander, a Democrat who was elected in November. The initiative began under his predecessor, Scott Stringer. “The long-term goal is to have workplaces that are more diverse at every level.”

The nationwide protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 prompted U.S. companies to pledge to hire more people of color and be more transparent about their efforts to close pay and other equity gaps. Many companies set hiring targets and pledged billions in investments, particularly those to help Black Americans. Releasing the EEO-1 data, which shows that most companies are over-represented by White men in leadership roles, has become one way that companies have agreed to be more transparent.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing new rules around so-called human capital management disclosure, and requiring companies to release the EEO-1 data is a plan the comptroller’s office supports, Lander said. The comptroller most recently suggested the change in a letter to the SEC in June. Lander wouldn’t discuss future investor activism related to EEO-1 disclosure but said the office will continue to look for opportunities to use the city investments to further the progress already made. 

Since 1966

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been collecting the data since 1966 and compiles it annually into an anonymized, aggregated snapshot of the U.S. labor force. Publicly disclosed EEO-1 forms can be compared with peer industries, overall U.S. data and even geographic breakdowns. The data are the only nationwide, universal set of workforce information that can be tied directly to companies.

The last 11 companies to agree with the comptroller to disclose their data were American Express Co., Anthem Inc., Honeywell International Inc., Illumina Inc., Intuitive Surgical Inc., Raytheon Technologies Corp., Simon Property Group Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., The PNC Financial Services Group Inc., T-Mobile US Inc., and Zoetis Inc. A similar Bloomberg News project this month found that 91 of the companies in the S&P 100 either already have released their EEO-1 documents or have agreed to do so soon, many of them for the first time this year. That's up from 25 in 2020.

The New York City initiative included the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the New York City Fire Pension Fund, the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, and the New York City Board of Education Retirement System,

The wider release of data now means that employee groups, outside activists, customers and others can analyze the information and hold companies accountable to show progress, Lander said.

“Now there needs to be the kind of work that is engaging with the data as it comes out,” he said. “Just because they are disclosing it, doesn’t mean it’s getting better, or setting goals, or hitting them.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.