FLSA Recordkeeping: What Employers Must Keep, and For How Long

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s recordkeeping rule, 29 CFR Part 516, an employer must keep a defined set of identifying information for each covered employee, plus payroll and time records — and the retention period depends on the category: three years for payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, and sales and purchase records, and two years for time cards, piece-work tickets, wage rate tables, and work and time schedules.

This original record-reading guide is a general reading aid, not cited evidence. It does not depict a source record; the article text and source links provide the facts.

Key points

• Section 516.2(a) requires specific identifying data for each employee, including full name for Social Security purposes, home address with zip code, date of birth if under 19, and sex and occupation.
• Section 516.5 sets a 3-year retention period for payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, and sales and purchase records.
• Section 516.6 sets a 2-year retention period for time cards and piece-work tickets, wage rate tables, and work and time schedules.
• DOL Fact Sheet #21 groups “records of additions to or deductions from wages” with the two-year, time-card category — not the three-year payroll-record category.
• This article does not address whether employees have any right to see or copy these records — Part 516 is a duty employers owe to the government, not to the worker.

Required record identifiers

Under 29 CFR Part 516, each covered employee’s record must include, among other items:

• “Name in full, as used for Social Security recordkeeping purposes” (29 CFR Part 516)
• “Home address, including zip code” (29 CFR Part 516)
• “Date of birth, if under 19” (29 CFR Part 516)
• “Sex and occupation in which employed” (29 CFR Part 516)
• “Time of day and day of week on which the employee’s workweek begins” (29 CFR Part 516)

These are identity and workweek-definition items — the regulation ties record content to who the employee is and when their pay week starts, not to how the employer chooses to format its payroll paperwork.

Three-year records

DOL Fact Sheet #21 identifies the categories that fall under the three-year rule: “payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, sales and purchase records” (DOL Fact Sheet #21). The rule itself states this directly: 29 CFR Part 516 requires “Records to be preserved 3 years” for this group.

Two-year records

A second, shorter category applies to source documents used to calculate pay rather than the payroll summaries themselves. Fact Sheet #21 describes this group as “time cards and piece work tickets, wage rate tables, work and time schedules, and records of additions to or deductions from wages” (DOL Fact Sheet #21), and Part 516 sets the period for these as “Records to be preserved 2 years” (29 CFR Part 516). In practice, this means the underlying time and rate data an employer uses to compute wages — including records of wage additions and deductions — has a shorter federal retention floor than the payroll and agreement records built from it.

Where these requirements currently stand

The eCFR text cited above reflects the regulation “as of 9/03/2026,” with Title 29 “last amended 8/31/2026” (29 CFR Part 516). DOL Fact Sheet #21 is marked “Revised July 2008” (DOL Fact Sheet #21), so the fact sheet’s plain-language summary predates the most recent eCFR display date; readers relying on either document for a specific compliance decision should check the current version at the link before acting.

What this article does not answer

This article covers only what 29 CFR Part 516 requires an employer to keep and for how long. It does not address whether an employer must give an employee a copy of their own pay or time records, and it does not address whether an employer must provide a pay stub. Part 516 is a retention duty an employer owes to the federal government for enforcement purposes — it is not a disclosure duty owed to the employee, and neither the regulation nor Fact Sheet #21 creates a federal right for a worker to inspect or receive a copy of these records. Any right to see, or receive a copy of, pay records or pay stubs — and any requirement to keep records longer than these federal minimums — is a matter of state law, and state requirements vary. Readers who want to know whether they personally are entitled to a copy of their pay records should check the law of their own state rather than relying on this federal recordkeeping rule.

Source links

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-V/subchapter-A/part-516 https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/21-flsa-recordkeeping