---
title: "File Clerk"
description: "File correspondence, cards, invoices, receipts, and other records in alphabetical or numerical order or according to the filing system used. Locate and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/file-clerk"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# File Clerk

**Category:** Office and Administrative Support · **SOC code:** 43-4071 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 43-4071.00

File correspondence, cards, invoices, receipts, and other records in alphabetical or numerical order or according to the filing system used. Locate and remove material from file when requested.

Also advertised as: Claims Clerk; Clerk; Clerk Typist; Documentation Specialist; File Clerk; Medical Records Clerk; Office Assistant; Police Records Clerk.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $43,600 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $20.96/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $31,200 to $63,490, with the middle half between $36,420 and $51,770
- **Total US employment:** 73,440
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -15.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 30/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 73,440 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $31,200 |
| 25th | $36,420 |
| 50th (median) | $43,600 |
| 75th | $51,770 |
| 90th | $63,490 |
| Mean (average) | $45,590 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OR | $50,660 | $49,013 | 970 |
| HI | $50,630 | $46,048 | 100 |
| IL | $49,920 | $49,941 | 3,780 |
| AK | $49,910 | $48,760 | 150 |
| CA | $49,040 | $44,292 | 9,520 |
| MA | $48,310 | $45,680 | 600 |
| VT | $47,540 | $48,531 | 70 |
| MN | $46,640 | $47,292 | 760 |
| IA | $46,560 | $53,053 | 430 |
| CO | $46,490 | $45,113 | 1,130 |
| ID | $45,910 | $48,076 | 540 |
| WA | $45,830 | $42,827 | 520 |
| WI | $45,130 | $47,962 | 1,550 |
| MD | $44,920 | $42,798 | 880 |
| CT | $44,810 | $43,249 | 350 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/file-clerk/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/file-clerk.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 76,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 64,200 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 12,000 jobs, or -15.8%. Declining: -15.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 38.4% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 30.1% |
| Some College Courses | 23.2% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 8.3% |

## What the work involves

- Perform general office activities, such as typing, answering telephones, operating office machines, processing mail, or securing confidential materials.
- Find, retrieve, and make copies of information from files in response to requests and deliver information to authorized users.
- Place materials into storage receptacles, such as file cabinets, boxes, bins, or drawers, according to classification and identification information.
- Scan or read incoming materials to determine how and where they should be classified or filed.
- Answer questions about records or files.
- Sort or classify information according to guidelines, such as content, purpose, user criteria, or chronological, alphabetical, or numerical order.
- Eliminate outdated or unnecessary materials, destroying them or transferring them to inactive storage, according to file maintenance guidelines or legal requirements.
- Add new material to file records or create new records as necessary.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Administrative — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Telecommunications — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Information Ordering — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Category Flexibility — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 7.00 |
| R — Realistic | 2.41 |
| S — Social | 2.05 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.76 |
| I — Investigative | 1.28 |
| A — Artistic | 1.01 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 83.4 |
| ISTJ | 81.3 |
| ESTJ | 79.4 |
| ESFJ | 73.2 |
| INTJ | 53.0 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ISTJ, ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Data Entry Keyer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-entry-keyer) — median $41,340
- [Medical Records Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-records-specialist) — median $51,140
- [Office Clerk, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/office-clerk-general) — median $45,010
- [Correspondence Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/correspondence-clerk) — median $46,800
- [Word Processor and Typist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/word-processor-and-typist) — median $49,280
- [Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bookkeeping-accounting-and-auditing-clerk) — median $50,670
- [Administrative Services Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-services-manager) — median $114,130
- [Billing and Posting Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/billing-and-posting-clerk) — median $48,500
- [Postal Service Mail Sorter, Processor, and Processing Machine Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/postal-service-mail-sorter-processor-and-processing-machine-operator) — median $58,470
- [Payroll and Timekeeping Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/payroll-and-timekeeping-clerk) — median $58,260

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/file-clerk