Employer guideRead at source September 28, 2026

Indiana New Hire Reporting: Deadline, New Data Fields and How to File (2026)

Indiana employers must report every new or rehired employee to the Indiana New Hire Reporting Center within 20 days of the hire or rehire date, and since July 1, 2024 the report must be filed electronically and include the employee's job title, SOC occupation code, starting pay and rate of pay. Independent contractors are not required. The Department of Workforce Development may impose a civil penalty of $25 per failure, or $500 where employer and employee conspire (IC 22-4-10-8).

Indiana new hire reporting at a glance

Indiana used to track the federal baseline set out in our national new hire reporting guide. Senate Bill 148, effective July 1, 2024, changed two things at once: paper reports stopped being an option, and the report now collects what the job is and what it pays. For an employer hiring dozens of hourly workers a month, both changes land on whoever builds the payroll export.

What an Indiana report now contains

The Center's reporting fundamentals page lists every required field:

• Employer: FEIN (the one used for quarterly wage reports), name, and payroll processing address.
• Employee, federal set: full name (first, middle, last), mailing address, Social Security number and date of hire.
• Employee, Indiana additions since July 1, 2024: current job title; primary Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code; starting salary; and rate of pay, meaning whether pay is annual, hourly or other.
• Optional: employee state of hire and date of birth; employer phone, fax, email and contact name.

The Department of Workforce Development's employer page also lists date of birth and eligibility for medical insurance among the details to gather; the Center marks date of birth as optional.

Getting the SOC code right

The SOC code may not be a field your payroll system holds by default. The Center's home page links to an occupation coding tool on Indiana's hoosierdata.in.gov site. For frontline roles the code usually follows the job: the same code for every CNA, every forklift operator, every line cook. Map each job title in your system to a code once, rather than looking it up per hire, and the report builds itself. The Center's File Transfer page carries the updated file layouts for SFTP and web upload.

Two of the new fields are easy to confuse. Starting salary is the amount; rate of pay is the unit it is paid in, annually, hourly or other. A $17.50-an-hour warehouse associate is reported as 17.50 with an hourly rate of pay. The statute itself calls the amount the employee's starting compensation.

How to file in Indiana: electronic only

The Center's position is plain: "Employers must report electronically utilizing one of our electronic reporting options." The first step is to register for an online account. Then choose:

• Online reporting: an interactive form at in-newhire.com, with printable confirmation, available around the clock.
• Web upload: export a file from payroll or HR software in the Center's layout and upload it.
• SFTP: scheduled secure file transfer for larger volumes.

A payroll or accounting service may report for you, but DWD is explicit that it is the employer's responsibility to make sure the service does. The Center's contact details still show a PO Box (3429, Trenton, NJ 08619) and a fax number, (800) 408-1388, but its reporting pages describe only electronic options, and its forms page offers only the W-4 and multistate registration. The help desk is open 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern, Monday through Friday.

The Indiana deadline

The Center and DWD both state the deadline as within 20 days of the hire or rehire date, and the Center asks file transmitters to send two monthly transmissions 12 to 16 days apart so every employee lands inside that window. The Center defines the date of hire as "the first day an employee performs services for pay."

The statute's own wording is looser. IC 22-4-10-8 says an employer must transmit the information "within twenty (20) business days of the employee's date of hire." Federal law, which Indiana's program exists to implement, sets 20 days as the outer limit, and the state's own agencies publish 20 days. Plan on 20 calendar days from the first paid shift and you satisfy all three.

The Center also says hires who quit or are terminated before you report them should still be submitted, which matters in high-turnover roles where a share of starts leave in the first week.

Independent contractors

Indiana does not require contractor reporting. The federal contact guide records Indiana as "No," and the statute defines the employee to be reported by reference to the federal income tax withholding definition. Workers you pay on a 1099 are outside the requirement, but a worker misclassified as a contractor is still an unreported employee.

Penalties under IC 22-4-10-8

The statute lets the department impose a civil penalty of $25 on an employer that fails to comply, and $500 where the failure results from a conspiracy between employer and employee to skip the report or supply a false or incomplete one. DWD's employer page states the same: "a fine of $25 per employee not reported, or up to $500" for a conspiracy. The Center also receives a quarterly federal report of employers that may be missing new hires and sends them notices, and a mismatched FEIN is a common reason an employer shows up on that list.

Rehires and returning seasonal employees

An employee who returns after being laid off, furloughed, separated, on unpaid leave or terminated is reported again once 60 days have passed. The Center is explicit about the other side: a return within 60 consecutive days does not need a report. Teachers, seasonal workers and election poll workers are named. Temporary agencies report a worker once unless there is a 60-day break in service. Our rehire policy guide covers the HR decisions.

Multistate employers

Because Indiana already requires electronic reporting, an Indiana employer with staff in other states meets one precondition for the federal multistate option. Registering lets you report all employees to a single state. See the new hire reporting requirements page for how it works.

Hiring in Indiana

For the other rules that apply at hire, see Indiana labor laws, the Indiana minimum wage, E-Verify requirements by state and Form I-9 requirements. Boostpoint runs social job ads on Meta for frontline employers. Our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark (891 Boostpoint-managed campaigns on Meta) put the median cost per applicant at $13.88 across the whole report, in advertising cost only; it is not split by state.

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