Payroll Record Retention Requirements by State

The federal answer is three years for payroll records and two years for the time cards and schedules behind them, under the Fair Labor Standards Act. That answer is wrong for most employers, for two reasons. First, other federal laws attach to the same records with longer periods: four years for employment tax records, three for leave, five for injury logs, six for benefit plan records. Second, nine states and the District of Columbia require longer than the federal minimum for wage and hour records themselves, led by New York and New Jersey at six years and Illinois at five for wage-rate records.

This guide gives the federal schedule with citations, a 50-state table of what each state requires beyond it, the paid-leave records that have their own periods, how long an employee can sue (which is the real reason to keep records longer than the law requires), and a retention schedule that satisfies every rule at once. It covers wage, hour and payroll records; personnel files, I-9s and medical records have their own rules, noted briefly at the end.

Federal retention periods

The Fair Labor Standards Act periods are minimums for enforcement. The Department of Labor can inspect records at any time and will reconstruct hours from employee testimony if the records are missing, under the Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery rule, which means the employer that destroyed time cards at two years and one day is defending a wage claim with nothing. Nothing in federal law requires destruction at any point, so the only question is how long you choose to keep records beyond the minimum.

State requirements that exceed the federal rule

Most states copy the federal three-year rule or set no period of their own. The ones that go further, verified against the statute or the state agency's mandatory notice in November 2026:

• New York: 6 years. Labor Law 195(4) requires employers to "establish, maintain and preserve for not less than six years contemporaneous, true, and accurate payroll records" showing hours worked, rate, gross and net wages, deductions and allowances for each employee each week. Section 195(1) requires the pay-rate notice and the employee's signed acknowledgment to be kept six years, and Section 661 under the Minimum Wage Act repeats the six-year rule. The six years matches New York's six-year statute of limitations for wage claims, so the record and the claim period are aligned.
• New Jersey: 6 years. The Wage and Hour Law (N.J.S.A. 34:11-56a20) requires a true record of hours worked and wages paid; the regulations and the state's mandatory wage and hour poster (MW-400) set the period: "The employer must keep the wage and hour records described above for a period of six years," at the place of employment or a central New Jersey office. Unemployment and disability insurance payroll records must be kept for the current year plus the four preceding years.
• Hawaii: 6 years, per the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations' wage standards guidance under Hawaii Revised Statutes 387-6, which delegates the period to rule. The statute itself does not state the period; verify against the current administrative rule before relying on it.
• Illinois: 5 years for wage-rate records, 3 years for the rest. The Illinois Equal Pay Act (820 ILCS 112/20) requires records of names, addresses, occupations and wages to be preserved for not less than five years, raised from three in 2009; the Minimum Wage Law (820 ILCS 105/8) requires three years; and the Paid Leave for All Workers Act (820 ILCS 192/20) requires hours worked, leave accrued and taken and balances to be kept three years, longer while a claim is pending. In practice Illinois employers keep pay records five years.
• Arizona: 4 years. A.R.S. 23-364(D), enacted with the state's earned paid sick time law, requires payroll records showing hours worked each day, wages paid and earned paid sick time for four years.
• Texas: 4 years in effect. The Payday Law sets no period, but Texas Workforce Commission rules for unemployment tax (40 TAC 815.106) require payroll records to be kept four years, and the Commission tells employers to keep wage and hour records at least that long.
• California: 3 years, plus a longer rule for pay history. Labor Code 1174(d) requires payroll records to be kept not less than three years; Section 226 requires copies of wage statements for three years; Section 247.5 requires paid sick leave records for three years. Section 432.3(c)(4), added by the 2022 pay transparency law, requires "records of a job title and wage rate history for each employee" to be kept for the duration of employment plus three years. There is no California statute requiring four-year payroll retention; the four years that counsel recommend is the Unfair Competition Law's limitations period, discussed below.
• Pennsylvania: 3 years for everything. 34 Pa. Code 231.31 requires all required records to be preserved three years from the date of last entry, with no two-year tier for time cards, so Pennsylvania employers must keep time cards a year longer than the federal rule alone requires.
• District of Columbia: 3 years or the federal standard, whichever is greater (D.C. Code 32-1008), so any future federal extension applies automatically.

Two states set shorter periods than federal law: Oregon (two years, ORS 653.045) and Nevada (two years, NRS 608.115). The federal three-year rule governs in both.

All states

"Federal" means the state either has no retention statute for private wage and hour records or sets three years, matching the federal payroll rule. Entries marked with an asterisk were confirmed from secondary sources only.

Paid sick leave and other records with their own periods

The state paid sick leave laws of the last decade each carry a recordkeeping rule, and several are the reason a state's effective period is longer than its wage law alone would suggest.

• Arizona: four years for hours worked, wages and earned paid sick time (A.R.S. 23-364(D)).
• California: three years for paid sick days accrued and used (Labor Code 247.5); the Labor Commissioner's guidance restates the three-year rule.
• Illinois: three years for hours worked, paid leave accrued and taken and remaining balances under the Paid Leave for All Workers Act, longer while a claim is pending; Chicago and Cook County ordinances have their own periods.
• Washington: paid sick leave accruals, reductions and balances are required payroll records under WAC 296-128-010 and fall under the three-year rule in WAC 296-126-050.
• New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, Rhode Island, Nevada, New Mexico, Maine and others with leave laws generally fold leave records into the wage-record period (six years in New York and New Jersey, three elsewhere); check the leave statute where it differs.

Other record families with their own periods: pay transparency and pay data reports (California requires job title and wage rate history for employment plus three years; Illinois and Colorado have reporting rules), predictive scheduling records (Los Angeles three years, Philadelphia two, see predictive scheduling laws by state), and workers' compensation and unemployment insurance payroll records, which run four to five years in most states.

Why the statute of limitations matters more than the retention rule

The retention statute says how long you must keep records. The statute of limitations says how long an employee can sue over the period they cover. When the second is longer than the first, an employer that follows the retention rule literally will one day face a claim for a period whose records it legally destroyed, and under Mt. Clemens the employee's recollection then fills the gap. The claims periods that matter:

Add the Internal Revenue Service's four years, which runs from the due date of the fourth-quarter return and so ends about five years and three months after the first pay date of the year it covers, and the practical conclusion for a multistate employer is that four years is the floor and six is the number that avoids ever having to think about it.

What a complete time and pay record contains

Retaining the wrong records for the right period is a common failure. The federal regulation at 29 CFR 516.2 lists what a nonexempt employee's record must contain; the state laws add to it.

• Full name and identifying number, home address, date of birth if under 19, sex and occupation (the last two for Equal Pay Act purposes).
• The time of day and day of the week the workweek begins.
• Regular hourly rate for any week in which overtime is worked, the basis of pay (hourly, salary, piece rate) and any payments excluded from the regular rate.
• Hours worked each workday and total hours each workweek. "Hours worked" means actual start and stop times, not scheduled ones; a record of scheduled shifts is not a time record. Where punches are rounded, keep the unrounded punches (see time clock rounding).
• Total daily or weekly straight-time earnings, total weekly overtime earnings, all additions to and deductions from wages with an explanation of each, total wages paid each pay period, and the date of payment and pay period covered.
• State additions: meal period start and end times (California, Washington, Oregon and others, see lunch break deductions), paid leave accrued and used, the pay rate notice and acknowledgment (New York, California, Minnesota and the other wage-theft-notice states), tip credits and tip pools, and for exempt employees the basis for the exemption and salary paid.

For exempt employees the federal rule requires the same identifying data and the basis on which wages are paid, but not daily hours. No state requires longer retention for exempt employees' records specifically; several exempt them from hour-recording requirements altogether. Keeping the salary history is still essential, since the exemption itself can be challenged for the full limitations period. Our HR metrics guide covers what to report from these records; the year-end checklist covers the annual tax filings they feed.

A retention schedule that satisfies everything

Six years for time and pay records is longer than most schedules and costs almost nothing in a digital system. It eliminates the question of which state's rule applies to a remote employee, removes the two-year time-card trap, and guarantees that every wage claim that can lawfully be brought can be answered with the actual record rather than with reconstruction.

Format, location and destruction

• Electronic records are acceptable under federal law and every state law, provided they are accurate, retrievable, and can be produced in a readable form on request. The Department of Labor requires records to be made available within 72 hours of notice (29 CFR 516.7). Timekeeping system exports should be in a durable format (PDF or CSV, not only inside a vendor's database you may stop paying for).
• Location: Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey require records to be kept at or near the place of employment or a central in-state office; federal law allows a central records office. Cloud storage satisfies both if the records can be produced at the workplace on request.
• Vendor transitions are the point at which records are most often lost. Export the full history before a timekeeping or payroll system is retired, and confirm the export contains unrounded punches and meal periods, not just pay totals.
• Litigation holds suspend every schedule. Once a claim is threatened or reasonably anticipated, destruction of relevant records, including on an otherwise lawful schedule, is spoliation. Build the hold mechanism into the retention policy.
• Destruction should be documented: what was destroyed, when, under which schedule. Records containing Social Security numbers and bank details fall under state data-disposal laws (about 35 states) requiring shredding or secure deletion.
• Privacy: California's Consumer Privacy Act gives employees a right to access and, in some cases, delete their personal information, but retention required by law overrides a deletion request. The privacy notice should state the retention period for employment records.

Key takeaways

• Federal law requires payroll records for 3 years and time cards, schedules and wage-rate tables for 2 years (29 CFR 516.5 and 516.6); employment tax records for 4 years; FMLA records 3; OSHA logs 5; benefit plan records 6.
• New York and New Jersey require 6 years for wage and hour records; Illinois 5 for wage-rate records under its Equal Pay Act; Arizona 4; Texas 4 in effect through its unemployment tax rules; Pennsylvania 3 for all records including time cards.
• California requires 3 years for payroll, wage statements and sick leave, plus job title and wage rate history for employment plus 3 years; its four-year claims period under the Unfair Competition Law is why counsel say keep 4.
• Oregon and Nevada set 2-year periods shorter than federal law; the federal 3 governs. Oregon's six-year contract limitations period for unpaid wages is a reason to keep records longer there.
• Claims periods often exceed retention periods: an employer that destroys time cards at 2 years cannot defend a willful FLSA claim in year 3, and under Anderson v. Mt. Clemens the employee's recollection fills the gap.
• A single six-year schedule for time and pay records satisfies every state and federal rule and every statute of limitations; export full history, including unrounded punches, before retiring any system.
• Electronic records are acceptable everywhere; Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey require records at or near the workplace or an in-state office; litigation holds suspend every schedule.