Does a New York Employer Have to Keep a Personnel File? What the Law Requires

A print shop in Hauppauge has three employees. The owner runs payroll through an outside vendor, keeps the I-9 forms in a binder, and has never opened a folder with anyone’s name on it. In the spring the owner sent a press operator an email about a missed delivery. Now the owner has heard that a new state law gives employees their personnel file, and the question is simple: do I have to keep one?

The answer has two parts, and both matter on November 8, 2026, when Labor Law § 210-b takes effect. Our guide to getting your own personnel file covers the request from the employee’s side. This post covers what the employer has to have in the drawer before the request ever comes.

What the new law does and does not require

Labor Law § 210-b is an access law. It defines a personnel record as “a record kept by an employer that identifies an employee,” to the extent the record is used, or may be used, for the employee’s “qualifications for employment, promotion, transfer, additional compensation or disciplinary action.” The word that does the work is “kept.” The statute reaches what the employer has. It does not list a set of documents the employer must produce from nothing.

The governor said as much when signing the bill on September 9, 2026. The approval memorandum describes an agreement with the Legislature to clarify “that employers are not required to create a personnel file or produce new documents beyond the records they currently maintain.” That clarification is a promised amendment, not text in the statute today; the Legislature’s next regular session opens in January, after the effective date. Consequently, read the statute as signed, and read it by its verb.

What the statute does require, once a record exists, is specific. The employer must give the employee notice within ten days of placing negative information in the file. It must hand over a copy “at no cost” within five business days of a written request. It must keep “the complete personnel record” without deletions from the date of hire to three years after the employment ends. And if the employer elects to have a written personnel policy, the policy has to be kept at the office where personnel matters are handled.

The statute also lists what is included “to the extent prepared by an employer”: the name, address, date of birth, job title and description, the rate of pay, the starting date, the application, every evaluation, written warnings, lists of probationary periods, signed waivers, dated termination notices and any other disciplinary document. A record held by a vendor under contract to keep or supply personnel records counts too. Here, that can include the Hauppauge shop’s payroll vendor.

Put the two sides together and the real question for an employer is what it is already keeping, and whether it can find all of it in five business days.

And there’s nothing that compels a business to keep a personnel file past the bare minimum of what’s required by law. This law doesn’t force an employer to make records, and all it really does is give employees an absolute right to see what’s being said about them.

The file the law already makes every employer keep

Here is the second part of the answer. Long before § 210-b, New York’s wage laws and federal immigration law required every employer to keep records about each person on the payroll, and the Fair Labor Standards Act added its own for covered employers. None of them uses the phrase “personnel file.” Together, they are one.

And so the law doesn’t force you to create documents that you don’t already have. But there are certain things that every employer has to have on file. You need wage records, wage statements, basic biographical information, and the I-9 data because that’s required by federal immigration law. So everyone has or has to have a basic personnel file by virtue of New York’s labor law, federal immigration law and, for covered employers, the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The table below is the map. Each row is a record the law makes the employer create or keep, the period, and where the rule is written.

Read the last line of the table with the first. The payroll record already holds the employee’s name, address and rate of pay. Those are listed items in the new law’s definition. Consequently, the small employer who says “we have no personnel file” usually means “we have no folder.” The records exist; they are in the payroll system, the I-9 binder and the owner’s email.

What I tell a business to keep

The periods in the table are the floor. Six years covers the state wage records; three years after separation covers the new law. A business that keeps everything for the longest period that applies to it will not have to sort, at the moment a request arrives, which document it was allowed to discard.

So really, it’s a training issue, just as much as anything else that goes on in your business is a training issue. And again, if you’re running a business and you’ve got rules and regulations that the business has to follow and has to comply with, this is just another set of rules that the company has to follow and has to comply with. So my advice to every business is as long as it’s not protected information, meaning someone else’s records, just give them a copy of everything you put in their personnel file. Save the personnel file for seven years. That way, you stay out of trouble, you stay out of the regulator’s crosshairs, and you stay out of court with an employee that doesn’t like what you did.

Seven years is my margin over the six-year state periods, not a number in any statute. The protected-information point is in the statute: a personnel record does not include information about another person if disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of such other person’s privacy.” Indeed, that is the one category an employer should pull before it copies the file.

For the Hauppauge shop, the practical list is short. Gather what exists in one place: the payroll vendor’s records, the I-9s, the pay notices and acknowledgments, and any email or note that was used to warn, discipline, promote or change someone’s pay. Name one person to receive written requests. Put a calendar rule on the five business days. Our analysis of the employer’s duties under § 210-b walks through the notice and rebuttal steps in more detail.

What an employee can ask for, and what “there is no file” means

From November 8, 2026, a current or former employee can ask in writing for a copy of the personnel record. The employer has five business days, and it cannot charge for the copy. If the employer answers that there is no personnel file, the answer is rarely the end of it.

Ask for the records by what they are. The pay notice you signed at hiring. Your wage statements. The write-up or the email that preceded the change in your schedule or pay. If any of those exists, it identifies you and it was used relative to your pay or discipline, and the law reaches it whether it sits in a cabinet, an inbox or a vendor’s system. A negative entry you never saw also raises the ten-day notice question.

When the record is wrong, the statute gives you a way to answer it. If the employer will not agree to remove or correct the entry, you may submit a written statement of your position, and it becomes part of the record. Where the employer placed information it “knew or should have known to be false,” the statute provides a route to have it expunged through the collective bargaining agreement, other personnel procedures or judicial process. Our post on the counseling memo and the rebuttal right explains where that answer-in-the-file mechanism comes from.

The file matters most when a job ends badly. In a discrimination or retaliation case, the paper the employer kept is usually the paper it relies on, which is why the personnel file so often decides these cases. Consequently, ask early and keep your copy outside the workplace.

Asking is protected

The new law bars an employer from discharging, threatening, penalizing or retaliating against an employee who exercises these rights, and it names threats to report immigration status as retaliation. It does not stand alone.

In the private sector, Labor Law § 215 protects an employee who has “exercised rights protected under this chapter,” and § 210-b is in the same chapter. An employee may sue within two years for reinstatement or front pay, lost compensation, liquidated damages of up to $20,000, costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees. Labor Law § 740, the whistleblower statute, adds a jury trial, front pay, lost wages and benefits, a civil penalty, attorney’s fees and punitive damages where the violation “was willful, malicious or wanton.” Where an employer refuses the file and then disciplines the employee who complained about the refusal, both statutes are in play.

For the employer, my judgment is simple: a request is not a provocation. Answer it on time. Decide nothing about that employee’s job in the same week without a reason already in the file.

Back to the print shop

The owner in Hauppauge does have a personnel file for the press operator. It is the pay notice and acknowledgment from the first day, six years of payroll held by the vendor, the I-9 in the binder, and the email about the missed delivery. If the press operator asks in writing, the owner gathers those, withholds only another person’s private information, and sends the copy within five business days.

The ten-day notice runs from placing negative information in the record, and the email about the delivery went in before the law took effect. Showing it to the press operator now, with a chance to answer it in writing, costs the owner nothing. And if the press operator is let go the week after asking, the request and the firing will sit side by side in any lawsuit. Our wage and hour practice handles the pay records that sit at the bottom of every file, and our retaliation practice handles what happens after the request.

Sources

• Labor Law § 210-b, Access to personnel records (effective November 8, 2026)
• S.3460 (2025-2026), chapter 293 of 2026, with the governor’s approval memorandum
• Labor Law § 195, Notice and record-keeping requirements
• Labor Law § 661, Records of employers
• 12 NYCRR 142-2.6, Employer records
• 8 CFR 274a.2, Verification of identity and employment authorization
• 29 CFR 516.2, Records for employees subject to minimum wage and overtime
• 29 CFR 516.5, Records to be preserved 3 years
• 29 CFR 516.6, Records to be preserved 2 years
• Labor Law § 215, Prohibited retaliation
• Labor Law § 740, Retaliatory action by employers

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The press operator’s file was never empty. It was scattered. The same is true for most small employers on Long Island, and our employment law practice sees the result when a request goes unanswered and a job ends the same month.

If you asked your employer for your personnel file and were told there is none, or were disciplined or let go after asking, call (516) 750-0595 with a copy of your written request, or request a free case review.