Illinois's Equal Pay Registration Certificate (EPRC)

Illinois's 2021 amendment to its Equal Pay Act requires private employers with 100 or more Illinois-based employees to apply for an Equal Pay Registration Certificate (EPRC) from the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL), submitting individual employee-level wage, job-title, county and demographic data alongside a signed compliance statement, and to recertify every two years. Non-compliance can bring civil penalties of up to $10,000.
An independent evaluation published in December 2025 by the University of Illinois' Project for Middle Class Renewal analysed the program's first three years (2021–2023), covering more than 3.2 million employee records from nearly 4,000 firms. It found women earn 91–93 cents for every dollar earned by men — a smaller gap than the US average — but concentrated in lower-wage, male-dominated occupations, while Black and Hispanic workers earned 6–10% less than comparable white workers even after adjusting for job, firm and region.
The same study found gender gaps narrowed slightly in mid- and high-wage brackets between 2021 and 2023 but widened for women in the lowest wage group, and racial disparities showed little improvement or worsened in some categories. The researchers concluded that transparency alone has not resolved these structural inequities, and recommended public dashboards, expanded coverage of smaller firms, and risk-based enforcement tiers.

Read the full analysis: https://labor.illinois.gov/laws-rules/conmed/eprc.html