The window is open
Employment equity reporting for the 2026 cycle opened on 1 September 2026. If you employ 50 or more people, you have to file an annual employment equity report with the Department of Employment and Labour, and you have until 15 January 2027 to do it online. Miss it and you cannot get an employment equity compliance certificate, which means you cannot do business with the state.
The Department confirms that the reporting season opens on 1 September every year for both manual and online reporting, that manual reporting closes in October, and that online reporting closes on 15 January.
Who must report
You are a designated employer if you employ 50 or more people. Employers below that threshold were taken out of the annual reporting net by the Employment Equity Amendment Act, No. 4 of 2022, which came into force on 1 January 2025, and which the Department says was partly aimed at reducing the regulatory burden on employers with 1 to 49 employees.
Smaller employers are not off the hook entirely. The rest of the Act, including the ban on unfair discrimination, still applies. If a small employer wants a compliance certificate in order to bid for state work, it can still record its status on the EE system.
Section 21 of the Employment Equity Act requires the report to contain the prescribed information and to be signed by the chief executive officer. The Department is explicit that every report filed under the Act is a public document.
The dates and numbers
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Reporting season opens | 1 September 2026 |
| Online submissions close | 15 January 2027, midnight |
| Employees that make you a designated employer | 50 or more |
| Economic sectors with five-year targets | 18 |
| Employment Equity Amendment Act in force | 1 January 2025 |
| Employment equity regulations published | 15 April 2025 |
Manual submissions close earlier, in October. The Department publishes the exact manual cut-off with the season announcement each year, so confirm it on labour.gov.za before you rely on a date you read elsewhere. In the 2025 cycle the manual window ran from 1 September to 1 October.
What changed with the sectoral targets
On 15 April 2025 the Department published two sets of regulations under the amended Act: general administrative regulations, and regulations setting five-year numerical targets for 18 economic sectors. Those targets apply to the four upper occupational levels and to the employment of persons with disabilities, measured against the demographics of the economically active population.
The practical shift is how compliance is measured. The Department has said that designated employers will be assessed against their own annual targets set towards meeting the relevant five-year sectoral targets. That means your report is no longer just a headcount return. It is measured against a number your own plan committed you to.
Labour inspectors can enforce the Act. Knowingly giving false information to the Director-General or a labour inspector is a contravention that carries a sanction, and the penalty amounts are set out in Schedule 1 to the Employment Equity Act.
Why the certificate matters more than the fine
Section 53 of the Act makes an employment equity compliance certificate a prerequisite for doing business with any organ of state. For a company that relies on public tenders, a missed report is not a paperwork problem, it is a revenue problem.
This sits alongside the separate B-BBEE regime, which has its own rules and its own certificates. The two are often confused. Employment equity is about your workforce profile and your plan. B-BBEE is about ownership, procurement and enterprise development scoring, and the warnings issued to employers on BEE compliance run on a separate track. State procurement rules have tightened on that side too, as the new Treasury procurement regulations show.
What to do before January
Work through this in order rather than in the first week of January.
Activate your profile on the EE Online system. Reminder letters with activation links go to the email addresses the Department holds for chief executives and senior employment equity managers. Old passwords do not carry across cycles, so check that the contact details on the system are current before you need them.
Redo your workforce analysis by occupational level. You cannot report progress against a target you have not measured.
Check your plan against your sector’s targets. If you are behind, document the reason now, while you can still gather the evidence. A short, honest explanation supported by recruitment and promotion records is worth more than a strong number you cannot substantiate.
Consult. The Act requires consultation with employees or their representatives, and the minutes of that consultation form part of your record.
Get the chief executive’s signature arranged early. It is a statutory requirement, not a formality, and it is the step most often left until the last day.
If you are also managing headcount reductions this year, keep the two processes separate and follow the correct retrenchment process, because a flawed dismissal will show up in your equity numbers as well as at the CCMA.
Where to check
Go to labour.gov.za, then Online Services, then EE Online, for the reporting facility and the compliance certificate function. The Department’s media statements and alerts on the reporting season are published under the Newsroom section of the same site.
The sectoral numerical targets and the general administrative regulations were gazetted on 15 April 2025 and are available through the department’s resource centre. The Commission for Employment Equity publishes its annual report there as well, which is the clearest picture of how your sector is actually performing.
For queries the Department lists its employment equity directorate contacts on the site. Do not rely on a consultant’s summary for the cut-off dates. Check the department’s own page each September, because the manual and online closing dates are not the same.
