The White House has halted an Obama administration rule that would require businesses to report worker pay data by gender, race and ethnic groups in hopes of narrowing wage gaps among workers... Siding with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, [the administration] contended that the data collection would be too burdensome for firms and questioned how effective the information might be in fighting wage discrimination... The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had proposed that all employers with at least 100 workers submit the data across 10 job categories and 12 pay ranges on a form they already are required to submit annually that includes employment data by gender, race and ethnicity... Specific salaries would not be reported and the data would not be made public. The EEOC said it would analyze the information to better focus investigations into unlawful pay practices... Critics [of the Trump's administration's decision]... were outraged. “Make no mistake — it’s an all-out attack on equal pay,” Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, said in a statement. “Today’s action sends a clear message to employers: If you want to ignore pay inequities and sweep them under the rug, this administration has your back.”...Randy Johnson, a senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber was “gratified” by the White House decision in part because the chamber estimated that it would cost employers $1.3 billion a year.