Chapter 11 covers what belongs in every nonexempt employee’s payroll record — twelve data points built around a single hourly rate for work the employer can see, on premises the employer controls. That assumption breaks down for four categories of worker. Pay might depend partly on tips customers provide, the work might happen somewhere the employer never sets foot, or the size of the workforce or a worker’s own certificate status might decide whether an added recordkeeping duty attaches at all. For tipped employees, industrial homeworkers, agricultural workers, and workers employed under section 14 special certificates (certificates authorizing a special minimum hourly rate below the standard minimum wage), the Wage and Hour Division’s regulations layer additional records onto the standard record — though for agricultural employers, as detailed below, that baseline itself narrows before it grows fuller.

The layering follows the same logic each time: document whatever the ordinary record cannot show on its own. A tipped employee’s wage is only partly set by the employer, so the employer must mark each tipped employee on the pay record, log the tips the employee reports, and record the tip credit taken against those tips — capped at the gap between $2.13 (the cash wage the employer pays the tipped employee directly, before the tip credit closes the gap) and the applicable minimum wage (the minimum wage required under section 6(a)(1) of the Act), and disclosed to the employee in writing whenever it changes. Hours and earnings must be tracked separately for tipped and non-tipped work. An industrial homeworker, by contrast, works somewhere the employer cannot directly observe at all, so the employer instead logs each lot of work by date and amount of work given out to the worker, and date and amount of work turned in (§ 516.31(b)(1)), plus kind of articles worked on and operations performed, piece rate, hours worked, and wages paid, and supplies a handbook (obtained from the Wage and Hour Division) that the homeworker — not the employer — fills in as the work happens. Once the handbook is full or the homeworker’s employment ends, it goes back to the employer, who must preserve it for at least two years and make it available for inspection by the Wage and Hour Division on request (§ 516.31(c)).

Agricultural and special-certificate workers raise a threshold question the other two categories don’t: whether the added duty attaches at all, and if it does, what baseline record it attaches to. An employer who used 500 or fewer man-days (a man-day is any day an employee does agricultural work for 1 hour or more) of agricultural labor in every quarter of the prior year, and does not reasonably anticipate crossing that line this year, owes none of the extra agricultural records. That count includes agricultural labor supplied by crew leaders or farm labor contractors when the farmer is an employer — or a joint employer (one that shares control over the work with the crew leader or farm labor contractor) — of those workers, but it excludes members of the employer’s immediate family (§ 516.33(a)). In the year an employer reasonably anticipates crossing 500 man-days in any calendar quarter, § 516.33(b) narrows the baseline record itself: rather than the full twelve-item standard record from Chapter 11, the employer need only keep the employee’s name, home address, and sex and occupation (§ 516.2(a)(1), (2), and (4)), plus the added agricultural items — identifying, using a symbol or other identification, immediate family (as defined in section 13(a)(6)(B)), hand harvest laborers (as defined in section 13(a)(6)(C) or (D)), and range livestock workers (employees principally engaged in the range production of livestock, as defined in section 13(a)(6)(E)), and tracking man-days worked each week or month for every such employee other than immediate family. That duty doesn’t lift the moment usage drops back down — instead, the baseline record grows fuller. Under § 516.33(c), an employer who exceeded 500 man-days of agricultural labor in any calendar quarter of a year must keep the fuller record — the standard record described in Chapter 11, minus date of birth and total straight-time earnings — for every covered employee other than immediate family, hand harvest laborers, and range livestock workers, for the entire following calendar year, even if that next year’s count falls back under 500. For any minor under 18 working on days when school is in session, or on any day the minor is employed in an occupation found to be hazardous by the Secretary of Labor, the employer must keep a record — regardless of the man-day count — showing the minor’s name, the place where the minor lives while employed (plus a permanent address too, if that differs), and date of birth (§ 516.33(f)), except when the employer is the minor’s parent or guardian employing their own child or a child in the parent’s or guardian’s custody. Learners, apprentices, messengers, certain students — full-time students employed outside their school hours in a retail or service establishment, in agriculture, or in an institution of higher education — and workers paid a special minimum rate as handicapped workers under a section 14 special certificate (a special certificate authorizing payment of a special minimum hourly rate below the standard minimum wage) keep the same record as any other employee in their occupation, but the employer must mark distinctly on the payroll or pay records both the names and the required information and data for these employees (§ 516.30(b)), which may also be marked with a symbol or letter showing their certificate category.