Most of the set starts at your first employee
The common worry is that workplace posters are a big-company problem. They are not. The duty to post the core federal notices does not wait for you to reach some headcount. The minimum wage notice, the safety notice, the polygraph notice, and the military reemployment notice all apply to ordinary businesses from the day they have one employee. Only two of the six are gated by size, and the gates are easy to remember: 15 employees adds the discrimination poster, 50 adds the family leave poster.
Posting is about notice, not money. The point is that an employee or applicant can see, in a place they pass through, a plain summary of their rights and how to act on them. That is why the posters are free, why they have to go somewhere conspicuous, and why a missing one is a problem on its own even if you have done nothing else wrong. Whether a given poster applies to you comes down to a short list of triggers.
The six posters and who has to display each
Here are the six core federal posters, each with the trigger that makes it required, what it covers, and the agency behind it. The first four apply to almost any employer. The last two switch on at 15 and 50 employees.
FLSA minimum wage Any employee
Employee Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Summarizes the federal minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor limits, and, since a 2023 update, the PUMP Act right to break time and a private space for nursing employees. Nearly every employer is covered.
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WH-1088)OSHA Job Safety and Health Any employee
Job Safety and Health: It’s the Law. Tells workers they are entitled to a safe workplace and explains how to report a hazard to OSHA. Required of private employers affecting commerce. State-plan states use a state version, and federal agencies use their own.
OSHA (publication 3165)EPPA polygraph notice Most private employers
Employee Rights, Employee Polygraph Protection Act. Explains the strict limits on lie-detector tests for applicants and employees. Required of private employers in or affecting commerce; government employers are excluded as to their public employees.
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WH-1462)USERRA notice Any employee
Your Rights Under USERRA. Covers reemployment rights and protection from discrimination for people who serve in the uniformed services. Applies to every employer regardless of size, including the federal government.
U.S. Department of Labor, Veterans’ Employment and Training ServiceEEOC Know Your Rights 15+ employees
Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal. Covers Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA, GINA, the Equal Pay Act, and, since June 2023, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Replaced the old EEO is the Law poster in 2022 and becomes required at 15 employees.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity CommissionFMLA poster 50+ employees
Employee Rights and Responsibilities Under the FMLA. Summarizes unpaid, job-protected family and medical leave and how to file a complaint. Required at 50 employees, and it must be posted at every location, even where no employee is currently eligible.
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (WH-1420)Two of the six were rewritten in 2023, and that is the update most employers miss. The FLSA poster now carries the PUMP Act break time and space protections for nursing employees, and the EEOC poster now carries the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. A poster printed before 2023 can look perfectly fine and still be out of date on both counts. If you cannot tell when yours was printed, download the current version and replace it.
When extra posters apply
The six above are the federal baseline. A federal contract or a specific pay practice can attach more, and one contractor poster that used to be required has been pulled.
Federal contractors and subcontractors If you hold federal contracts
Covered contractors display extra notices: the Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination provision, the E-Verify and Right to Work posters if the contract requires E-Verify, and Davis-Bacon or Service Contract Act notices on covered work. The NLRA employee-rights poster is required of federal contractors, not of private employers in general.
OFCCP and DOL contractor rulesSpecial pay or industry Only if it applies
A subminimum-wage notice is required if you employ workers with disabilities at special rates under FLSA Section 14(c). Agricultural employers and a few regulated industries have their own notices. These attach to the practice, not to every business.
U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, situationalOne change is worth flagging because it moved recently. The federal contractor minimum wage poster tied to the 2021 executive order is no longer enforced. That order was revoked in March 2025, and the Department of Labor has stopped enforcing it and the implementing rule, so a current contractor poster set should not treat it as required. Contractor obligations shift with each administration, so confirm the contractor set against the agencies before you rely on an older list.
Watch the set grow as you hire
Because four posters apply from the start and two switch on at headcounts, the simplest way to see your obligation is to follow a single business as it grows. Here is the federal set for one company at three stages.
The takeaway is the order, not the count. You owe four posters before headcount enters the picture at all. The discrimination poster arrives at 15, the leave poster at 50, and everything past that is state, local, or situational.
Four ways the posting rule gets missed
- Displaying a pre-2023 poster.The PUMP Act update to the FLSA poster and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act update to the EEOC poster both landed in 2023. A poster older than that is stale even if it looks current, and a stale poster does not satisfy the requirement.
- Assuming a small business posts nothing.Four of the six apply from your first employee, with no headcount trigger at all. The belief that posters are only for larger employers leaves the most common ones off the wall at exactly the businesses that overlook them.
- Forgetting remote and multi-site workers.Each physical location needs its own posters. A fully remote workforce still has to be given the notices, which the agencies allow you to provide electronically through a site or shared drive employees can always reach, not a single copy taped up in someone’s home office.
- Paying for posters that are free, then skipping the ones that are not federal.Every federal poster is free from the issuing agency, and OSHA says plainly not to pay a third party for its poster. An all-in-one product is fine for convenience, but it is optional, and buying one does not cover your separate state and city postings, which change often and are where most gaps actually open up.
Pause before you treat a missing poster as a small thing. A posting gap is a violation on its own, with its own fine, and that is the smaller risk. The larger one is that an employee says they never knew about a right, and a missing notice becomes evidence against you in a charge or a lawsuit. For some laws, a failure to give a required notice can extend the window an employee has to act. The fix is cheap: download the current federal posters for free, confirm which ones your headcount and situation require, and check your state and local postings, which are not on this list. If you are a federal contractor or operate in more than one state, the set gets complicated quickly, so use the Department of Labor’s free poster advisor or ask employment counsel before you rely on a generic poster.
Where these requirements come from
Primary sources
- U.S. Department of Labor, Workplace Posters. The master list of Wage and Hour Division poster requirements, including the FLSA minimum wage poster (WH-1088, now carrying the PUMP Act protections), with the note that posting requirements vary by statute and not every employer is covered by each one. dol.gov, workplace postersChecked 2 June 2026
- EEOC, Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal. The source for the discrimination poster required of employers with 15 or more employees, updated on 27 June 2023 to add the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. eeoc.gov, the posterChecked 2 June 2026
- U.S. Department of Labor, FMLA poster (WH-1420). The source for the Family and Medical Leave Act poster, required of employers with 50 or more employees and posted at all locations even where no employee is currently eligible. dol.gov, FMLA posterChecked 2 June 2026
- OSHA, Job Safety and Health: It’s the Law (publication 3165). The source for the OSHA poster, required of private employers affecting commerce, free from OSHA, with state-plan and federal-agency variants. osha.gov, the posterChecked 2 June 2026
- U.S. Department of Labor, EPPA poster (WH-1462). The source for the Employee Polygraph Protection Act notice, required of private employers in or affecting commerce, with public employers excluded as to their public employees. dol.gov, EPPA posterChecked 2 June 2026
- U.S. Department of Labor, Your Rights Under USERRA. The source for the uniformed-services notice, required of all employers regardless of size, including the federal government, and satisfiable by posting or by other delivery. dol.gov, USERRA posterChecked 2 June 2026
- U.S. Department of Labor, elaws FirstStep Poster Advisor. The agency’s free tool that asks a few questions and tells you which federal posters your business must display. webapps.dol.gov, poster advisorChecked 2 June 2026
These are federal minimums, and the federal list is only part of your obligation. Your state and city almost certainly require their own posters, the rules and poster editions change, and a few of the federal posters switch on or off with headcount, your industry, or a federal contract. Confirm the current editions and which posters your business actually has to display before you rely on this summary.
Tools that build on this
Keep your postings on a schedule
HR Compliance Calendar and Document Audit. Includes a posting audit that checks the required federal notices and sets recurring dates to confirm they are current, so an outdated poster gets caught on a schedule instead of during an inspection. Find it at truestephr.com.
Small Business HR Policy Starter Pack. Walks a new or growing employer through the federal laws that attach by headcount, the same triggers that decide which posters you must display, so the wall and the handbook line up. Find it at truestephr.com.
Common questions
At a minimum, the four federal posters that apply from your first employee: the FLSA minimum wage poster, the OSHA Job Safety and Health poster, the EPPA polygraph poster, and the USERRA notice. Add the EEOC Know Your Rights poster once you reach 15 employees and the FMLA poster at 50. Then check your state and city, which usually require more.
Yes. The notice requirement does not disappear for remote teams. The agencies allow electronic delivery in place of a physical poster when employees do not regularly visit a workplace, as long as they can reach the notices at any time through a website or shared system. If you have any physical location, post there as well.
Yes. Every federal poster can be downloaded at no cost from the agency that issues it, and OSHA states plainly that you should not pay a third party for its poster. Paid all-in-one posters are a convenience, not a requirement. What a federal poster will not cover is your separate state and local postings.
Once your business has 50 or more employees, which is the coverage threshold for the Family and Medical Leave Act. At that point the poster must go up at every location, including sites where no individual employee is currently eligible for FMLA leave.