Fact Check: Do You Have to Give Employees a Pay Stub?

FLSA requires employers to KEEP payroll records (3 years payroll, 2 years underlying time records) but imposes no requirement to furnish a pay stub. California Labor Code §226 specifies $50 for the first violation and $100 per pay period subsequent. 41 states (plus DC) require a pay stub of some kind; 9 states do not (the article identifies them as AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, OH, SD, TN).

29 CFR Part 516 sets recordkeeping requirements (3 years for payroll records, 2 years for the underlying time/wage-rate records). The regulation requires the employer to maintain records — it does not require them to furnish the records to the employee. The article opens with this point as the load-bearing surprise.

California Labor Code §226(a) enumerates nine required items: (1) gross wages, (2) total hours, (3) piece-rate units/rates, (4) deductions, (5) net wages, (6) pay-period dates, (7) employee name + last four of SSN/employee ID, (8) employer name + address, (9) hourly rates × hours at each rate. The quick read's list is the load-bearing subset that's also required (or substantially required) in most other stub-required states.

The article's Quick Reference identifies the 9 no-stub states (AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, OH, SD, TN); the remaining 41 plus DC have some form of wage-statement requirement, varying widely in scope and penalty.

Direct restatement of the article's Quick Reference list of states with no statutory pay-stub requirement.

California Labor Code §226 specifies the nine required wage-statement items, the $50/$100 penalty structure (first violation / subsequent per pay period), the $4,000-per-employee cap, and mandatory attorney's fees. The article walks each item in the California deep-dive section.

Magadia v. Wal-Mart Associates, Inc., 999 F.3d 668 (9th Cir. 2021), reversed a roughly $102M district-court judgment on the §226 derivative-claim theory. The 9th Circuit's reversal turned on a narrow §226(a)(9) interpretation question, not on the broader derivative-claim mechanic — the article specifically notes that the reversal narrowed the law but did not eliminate the exposure shape.

Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, 13 Cal.5th 93 (2022), held that §226.7 premium pay is "wages" under Labor Code §200, which means it must appear on the wage statement. The four-claim cascade — §512 (meal period) + §226.7 (premium pay) + §226 (itemization) + §203 (waiting-time penalty) — is the structural consequence the article identifies as mistake #1.

Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services (2022) made meal-break premium pay "wages" for §226 purposes — meaning it must appear on the pay stub when paid (and a missed-break-premium-not-paid-and-not-on-stub becomes a §226 derivative violation).

Restatement of the Naranjo cascade as a trap bullet. The §226 stub violation is a separate per-pay-period claim on top of the underlying §226.7 premium-pay claim — the article's mistake #1.

The article's mistake #2 — derivative §226 claims off underlying overtime errors. When the regular rate is miscalculated (non-discretionary bonuses excluded), every affected pay stub is a §226(a)(2) (total hours) and §226(a)(9) (rates × hours) violation. Magadia produced the ~$102M district-court judgment on this pattern.

Ward v. United Airlines, 9 Cal.5th 732 (2020), is the controlling answer: §226 applies to employees whose principal place of work is California (or, for mobile workers without a single-state majority, whose base of operations is California). Multi-state payroll systems applying HQ rules systematically miss this.

Bluford v. Safeway Stores, 216 Cal.App.4th 864 (2013), held that piece-rate compensation pays for productive time only — rest breaks and other nonproductive time must be separately compensated AND must appear as a separate line on the wage statement. The 2015 piece-rate statutory amendment (Cal. Labor Code §226.2) codified this. The article's mistake #3.

Synthesis from the article's through-line: "the strict-everywhere recipe applies: California-compliant statements for everyone, even where state law requires less." The six items listed in the close (hours, rates, gross + net pay, deductions, pay-period dates, name + address) are the load-bearing subset of §226(a)'s nine items that overlap with most other stub-required states' requirements.