Maybe I'm mis-interpreting your question, but anyways,
you ask.

if I push @results1, @results2, do i get:

'employee1','address1','payrate1','hiredate1',
'employee2','address2','payrate2','hiredate2',
'employee3','address3','payrate3','hiredate3',
'employee4','address4','payrate4','hiredate4'

Well if you want a true multi-dimensional array, this isn't it. You just flattened it as MeowChow shows in Data::Dumper.

To have a multi-dimensional array you want

  |      0          1          2           3
---------------------------------------------------
0 | ['employee1','address1','payrate1','hiredate1'],
1 | ['employee2','address2','payrate2','hiredate2'],
2 | ['employee3','address3','payrate3','hiredate3'],
3 | ['employee4','address4','payrate4','hiredate4']
[download]

This is Array of Arrays - or more clearly an Array of scalars that contain Array Refs. The '[]' show an array reference.</>

To achive this you want

push(@AoA,\@result1,\@result2)

So let's say you want 'address2', you can access it by:

my $foo = @AoA[1]->[1]

HTH

grep

Unix - where you can throw the manual on the keyboard and get a command