Occupation / job
File Clerks
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
The $43,600 midpoint for File Clerks sits $6,420 under the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is a real living across much of the country and a thin one in expensive metros, so geography decides this more than seniority does.
73,440 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in File Clerks is still a distinguishing thing to have.
These roles suit people who want indoor, scheduled work with predictable demands, and who are good at being the person who knows where things are.
How long it takes to become one of the 73,440 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
Between $36,420 and $51,770 there is $15,350, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
The 25th percentile is $36,420 — $17.50 an hour, and $13,600 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if you need progression; these roles are frequently a level rather than a ladder.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 73,440 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $43,600 is a genuinely representative number for File Clerks and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $36,420 at the 25th percentile, $43,600 at the midpoint, $51,770 at the 75th. $15,350 separates the quarter of File Clerks at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $51,770, the 75th percentile, is worth $8,170 a year more than the $43,600 midpoint and $15,350 more than the $36,420 a quarter of File Clerks settle for.
$43,600 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $7,180 above the bottom quarter, $8,170 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $17.50 at the bottom quarter, $20.96 at the midpoint, $24.88 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of File Clerks for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $43,600 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $43,600 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for File Clerks, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else