HR Management & Compliance

State Law Affects HR Records Retention, Too

With 50 states, there can be 50 different sets of requirements on any employment law. Here’s a way to quickly scan them all.

The recent Advisor article on “data breach” noted that there are 22 different state laws on protection of records, not to mention New York City having its own law. What’s more, the proposed federal law is likely to be different from any of these.

This example points up yet again the impact our federal-plus-state system of government has on nearly everything you do in HR. Short of creating their own army or postal system, states are free to go their own way on most aspects of governance, and they do. For that reason, differences between federal and state law abound.

One example related to the data breach issue involves the simple matter of employee records retention. States vary widely in how many years you are required to hold records, and some even have variances within their own laws. Certain records must be held longer than others.


Get fast, side-by-side comparisons of employment law in each of the 50 states, plus D.C. – Quick Guide to Employment Law – Try it at No Risk


Here are some of the differences, as charted by BLR’s Quick Guide to Employment Law, which summarizes how state laws differ from the federal and from each other on some 150 HR-related topics. The records retention period stated is for basic payroll records only. States may specify different retention periods for records related to unemployment compensation, alternative forms of pay, or other HR-related matters:

Basic Pay Records Retention Periods for the 50 States, Plus D.C.

Note: Federal law requires payroll records retention for 3 years.

1 Year: Louisiana, Utah

2 Years: California, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, West Virginia, Wyoming

3 Years: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Washington State, Wisconsin

4 Years: Arizona, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia

5 Years: Alabama, Florida

6 Years: Hawaii, Kentucky, New Jersey

Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and Vermont specify a retention period “sufficient to administer employment law” or similar language.

If we can put in a quick plug for a great product, the only way we were able to put together these differences efficiently was the unique layout of Quick Guide to Employment Law.


Your 30 day trial starts here – Quick Guide to Employment Law


For each of the150 HR-related topics covered, such as employee rights, discrimination, workers’ comp, or affirmative action, the book creates a simple grid chart.

The topics run across the top, the states along the side. Each grid box thus formed encloses a short summary of the requirements in that state. Looking at the grid, you literally have a snapshot of what every state, plus D.C., requires on each topic at the turn of a page.

If you’ve got a workforce spread over different states, this is a godsend in eliminating the need to plow through a big pile of individual state guides to find how each of your locations is regulated. The program includes three updates and newsletters each year, to keep the data current.

Links below let you examine this unique page layout and also sample the newsletter. There’s also a coupon that lets you evaluate the book in your own office for a month at no cost or obligation to purchase it. If you’ve got any concern at all about making sure you’re complying with all relevant law – state and federal – we suggest you take a look.

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For more information on Quick Guide to Employment Law, or to try the program FREE for 30 days, click here.


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