Validate Mean and Median Hourly Rates for Pay Data Reporting

The CRD Reporting Year 2025 handbook calculates mean and median within employee groups at each establishment. Its preparation instructions group by job category, race/ethnicity, sex, pay band, exemption status and employment type. Keep report type and labor contractor identity separate where applicable. A correct average over the wrong population is still an incorrect report.

Use the current 2025 template and code lists. The worked example below is explicitly for that edition. All four fictional employees are in the same establishment and share every grouping characteristic: the same job category, race/ethnicity and sex, non-exempt status, part-time employment type and pay band. Their annual earnings are all $36,000, within the 2025 band of $32,240 through $41,079.

For payroll employees, use annual earnings from W-2 Box 5, with the handbook's Box 1 fallback where wages are not reported in Box 5. Divide by the individual's annual hours under CRD's definition, including paid time off. Do not use contractual hourly pay, annualized salary or the snapshot-period paycheck as a substitute.

Keep the unrounded calculation in the working dataset and apply the specified output precision at export. Investigate zero or missing hours before dividing. Do not invent a small denominator to make a record pass validation or silently exclude an employee with unresolved inputs.

The mean is the sum of the four individual rates divided by four employees: ($20 + $24 + $30 + $36) / 4 = $27.50. CRD asks for this average of individual hourly rates. Each employee contributes one rate to the group calculation, even when their annual hours differ.

Dividing total earnings of $144,000 by total hours of 5,500 gives approximately $26.18. That is a different, hours-weighted result and is not the mean prescribed by the handbook. Retain both input totals as reconciliation controls, but do not use their quotient in place of the required employee-rate average.

The ordered rates are $20, $24, $30 and $36. With four employees, average the two middle values: ($24 + $30) / 2 = $27.00. The median is therefore different from the $27.50 mean. Sorting employee names, annual earnings or hours instead of rates would not establish the correct median.

For an odd-count variant containing only A, B and C, the middle ordered rate is $24.00, while the mean is $24.67 when rounded to two decimals. A single-person group's mean and median both equal that individual's rate. Two-person groups have the same mean and median, calculated from the two rates.

For the four-person example, the report group count is 4 and annual hours total 5,500. If each fictional employee has 50 reportable annual weeks, the group annual weeks total is 200. The total is employee-weeks, so it should not be capped at the number of weeks in one calendar year.

Reconcile remote-category counts to the same four employees. Then check the output precision: Appendix C specifies two decimal places for mean and median and rounding annual hours and weeks to the nearest positive whole number. Preserve source precision separately. Verify that no duplicate employee join has doubled hours or introduced an extra rate into the group.

Run boundary checks on the pay band and grouping fields before comparing totals. Two employees with the same job and demographic information may still belong in different rows because their pay band, exemption status or employment type differs.

Assign each unexpected value to its likely source: earnings basis, hours definition, duplicate join, group mapping or export rounding. Trace a sample from the output row back to the individual records and independently recompute the mean and median. This tests the complete chain rather than merely repeating a spreadsheet formula.

For labor contractor employees, the handbook requires earnings and hours attributable to the reporting client employer. Do not combine a worker's all-client earnings with only one client's hours. Preserve the allocation evidence and contractor identity. Give the certifying official the final calculations, reconciliation and unresolved issues before the report is submitted through CRD's portal.