labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Employers in Illinois, you have 20 days after a new person starts working for you to report that new hire to the proper state authorities. Sound like some form of Big Brother watching over you. Hardly. If, you loyal readers, you have been reading my blog as of late, you know that the new hire reporting in Illinois—and in every state in the land—is required for a couple reasons.

The first reason is to help track unemployment insurance fraud: i.e., say a gentleman is claiming unemployment in Missouri but is actually working in Illinois and is thus pulling in two paychecks. He wouldn’t fall through the cracks of the interstate employment system in the United States, because the new hire labor law would track him down.

Same goes for the other reason for the change to the labor laws surrounding new hire reporting. The second purpose for the National Directory of New Hires, and the directory set up by the Illinois Child Support Enforcement, is to catch parents who are either late on or unwilling to pay their child support payments. It used to be these people could flee to another state, say from Missouri to Illinois, get a new job in Illinois, and live “happily ever after” without paying child support. Not any more with the labor laws on new hire reporting.

That’s because the new labor laws make it so that employers have to be more organized than ever when it comes to facts about new employees. Within those 20 days mentioned before, employers have to send to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services: the employee’s name, the new employee’s address, the new employee’s social security number.

No employer is exempt from this rule, and it includes all forms of employees—full time, part time, temporary and re-hires.