Occupation / job
Library Assistants, Clerical
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
Library Assistants, Clerical pays $36,910 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $13,110 a year short, or $6.30 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
Employment stands at 85,520. Library Assistants, Clerical is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Library Assistants, Clerical — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Library Assistants, Clerical earn under $31,820 and a quarter over $45,620 — 1.4x, or $13,800 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
The bottom quarter is under $31,820, $18,200 short of the $50,020 typical American job. The question worth answering before entering Library Assistants, Clerical is how long people spend in that quarter, because the median says nothing about it.
Avoid it if absorbing other people’s frustration all day would wear you down; that is the substance of the role.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 85,520 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
The quarters are $31,820 and $45,620, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Library Assistants, Clerical is the cost of living where you do it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $31,820 at the 25th percentile, $36,910 at the midpoint, $45,620 at the 75th. $13,800 separates the quarter of Library Assistants, Clerical at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $45,620, the 75th percentile, is worth $8,710 a year more than the $36,910 midpoint and $13,800 more than the $31,820 a quarter of Library Assistants, Clerical settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $45,620 is $8,710 — well over the $5,090 down to $31,820. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Library Assistants, Clerical earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $17.74 at the midpoint for Library Assistants, Clerical, $15.29 at the 25th percentile and $21.93 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $36,910 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Library Assistants, Clerical, the hourly figure is $36,910 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else