---
title: "Office Clerk, General"
description: "Perform duties too varied and diverse to be classified in any specific office clerical occupation, requiring knowledge of office systems and procedures.…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/office-clerk-general"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Office Clerk, General

**Category:** Office and Administrative Support · **SOC code:** 43-9061 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 43-9061.00

Perform duties too varied and diverse to be classified in any specific office clerical occupation, requiring knowledge of office systems and procedures. Clerical duties may be assigned in accordance with the office procedures of individual establishments and may include a combination of answering telephones, bookkeeping, typing or word processing, office machine operation, and filing.

Also advertised as: Administrative Clerk (Admin Clerk); Clerical Aide; Clerical Assistant; Clerk; General Clerk; Office Assistant; Office Clerk; Office Services Specialist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $45,010 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $21.64/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $30,310 to $64,680, with the middle half between $36,350 and $54,300
- **Total US employment:** 2,464,940
- **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:** -6.7% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 282,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 20/100 — 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 2,464,940 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $30,310 |
| 25th | $36,350 |
| 50th (median) | $45,010 |
| 75th | $54,300 |
| 90th | $64,680 |
| Mean (average) | $46,420 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $55,040 | $50,081 | 5,670 |
| CO | $53,550 | $51,964 | 31,770 |
| AK | $51,890 | $50,694 | 3,440 |
| WA | $50,500 | $47,191 | 49,050 |
| ND | $50,160 | $56,386 | 8,440 |
| MA | $49,940 | $47,221 | 47,940 |
| OR | $49,910 | $48,287 | 27,980 |
| NH | $49,020 | $47,060 | 12,740 |
| NJ | $48,570 | $44,639 | 65,130 |
| CA | $48,460 | $43,768 | 311,490 |
| VT | $48,310 | $49,317 | 5,100 |
| CT | $48,280 | $46,598 | 23,190 |
| MN | $47,840 | $48,509 | 55,530 |
| RI | $47,830 | $46,764 | 7,700 |
| MD | $47,270 | $45,037 | 27,290 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/office-clerk-general/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/office-clerk-general.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 2,646,000 in the 2024–2034 base year to 2,468,200 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 177,800 jobs, or -6.7%. Declining: -6.7% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 282,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## 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 |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma | 40.6% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 36.4% |
| Some College Courses | 14.7% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 6.5% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 1.5% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 0.2% |

## What the work involves

- Operate office machines, such as photocopiers and scanners, facsimile machines, voice mail systems, and personal computers.
- Communicate with customers, employees, and other individuals to answer questions, disseminate or explain information, take orders, and address complaints.
- Answer telephones, direct calls, and take messages.
- Review files, records, and other documents to obtain information to respond to requests.
- Open, sort, and route incoming mail, answer correspondence, and prepare outgoing mail.
- Deliver messages and run errands.
- Type, format, proofread, and edit correspondence and other documents, from notes or dictating machines, using computers or typewriters.
- Compute, record, and proofread data and other information, such as records or reports.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.1 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.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Administrative — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.4 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), Enterprising (E), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 6.84 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.20 |
| S — Social | 3.06 |
| R — Realistic | 2.92 |
| I — Investigative | 1.85 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 84.5 |
| ISFJ | 83.5 |
| ISTJ | 80.0 |
| ESFJ | 79.4 |
| ENTJ | 53.8 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISFJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Secretary and Administrative Assistant, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive](https://nuecareer.com/careers/secretary-and-administrative-assistant) — median $47,540
- [File Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/file-clerk) — median $43,600
- [Receptionist and Information Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/receptionist-and-information-clerk) — median $38,010
- [Administrative Services Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/administrative-services-manager) — median $114,130
- [Medical Secretary and Administrative Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-secretary-and-administrative-assistant) — median $45,930
- [Correspondence Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/correspondence-clerk) — median $46,800
- [First-Line Supervisor of Office and Administrative Support Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-office-and-administrative-support-workers) — median $69,500
- [Executive Secretary and Executive Administrative Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/executive-secretary-and-executive-administrative-assistant) — median $76,590
- [Switchboard Operator, Including Answering Service](https://nuecareer.com/careers/switchboard-operator) — median $38,630
- [Billing and Posting Clerk](https://nuecareer.com/careers/billing-and-posting-clerk) — median $48,500

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 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, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 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 30.3 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/office-clerk-general