Most personnel files: 7 years after employment ends. Pension-enrolled employees: up to 50 years. Applicants you did not hire: 1 year. The rules quoted from Michigan DTMB General Schedule #26 (Human Resources).
Personnel retention is where Michigan’s schedules spread the widest, from one year to half a century, and the difference is entirely about what the record might be needed to prove later. The baseline:
DTMB General Schedule #26 (Human Resources), item 26.100A; approved 8/16/2022. Applies to Michigan local government.
The clock runs from separation, not from hiring or from the document’s date, so a 30-year employee’s file lives 37 years or more. And for anyone enrolled in a pension plan, the file effectively outlives careers:
DTMB General Schedule #26 (Human Resources), item 26.200A; approved 8/16/2022.
At the other end of the spread, applicants you never hired do not haunt your filing cabinet:
DTMB General Schedule #26 (Human Resources), item 26.120; approved 8/16/2022.
Each clock matches the dispute window the record serves. Seven years covers the statute-of-limitations horizon for most employment claims. Fifty years covers a pension entitlement questioned at the end of a retiree’s life, which is also why the payroll register (item 26.202) carries a 50-year clock while routine payroll reports (26.203) get seven. One year covers hiring-discrimination windows for candidates who never became employees.
Two practice notes. First, GS #26 applies to local government HR generally, but some office schedules carry their own personnel variants (public libraries and schools, for example, subdivide theirs); check the schedule for your entity type in the searchable database. Second, personnel files are exactly the records most likely to sit under a litigation hold; any pending or reasonably anticipated employment dispute suspends these clocks entirely.
Dekree applies the right GS #26 series to HR records as they land in the vault, tracks each separation-anchored clock, and holds anything tied to an open dispute. Fifty-year clocks are precisely the kind no one should be tracking in their head.
Every quote links to the exact page of the official GS #26 PDF on michigan.gov, and all of GS #26 is browsable on its database page. Employment records carry real liability; confirm disposal decisions with your municipal attorney.
The baseline under General Schedule #26 (Human Resources) is 7 years after the individual is no longer employed (item 26.100A). Temporary employees carry the same 7-year rule (26.100B); contractual employees run 6 years after the contract expires (26.100C). The big exception is retirement: employee files for staff enrolled in a pension plan are kept until the individual is no longer employed plus 50 years, or until retirement plus 6 years (item 26.200A), because pension entitlements can be disputed decades later.
One year after the decision not to hire, under GS #26 item 26.120, if the application is unsolicited or the position was filled. Keeping every application forever is a liability habit, not a legal requirement.
The payroll register, the permanent wage history of every employee, is kept 50 years after the fiscal year ends (GS #26 item 26.202). Routine payroll reports are 7 years (26.203). The long register clock exists for the same reason as the pension rule: wage history feeds retirement calculations half a century out.
This article is educational information for Michigan public bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: legislature.mi.gov.