Occupation / job
Order 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
$46,170 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint puts Order Clerks $320 a month below the middle of the American labour market — close enough that the spread below matters more to your outcome than the headline does.
Employment stands at 75,200. Order Clerks 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.
Information and records work suits people who can be accurate and pleasant simultaneously, often while the person in front of them is neither.
We carry no verified training length for Order Clerks — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Order Clerks earn under $39,660 and a quarter over $54,310 — 1.4x, or $14,650 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
A quarter of Order Clerks earn under $39,660, which is $10,360 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if being the first point of contact for other people’s problems all day would wear you down.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 75,200 people employed as Order Clerks; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
The quarters are $39,660 and $54,310, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Order Clerks is the cost of living where you do it.
In cash terms the middle half of Order Clerks runs $39,660 to $54,310 — $14,650 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $46,170.
Between $39,660 and $54,310 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $46,170. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $8,140; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $14,650.
From $46,170 it is $6,510 down to the bottom quarter and $8,140 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $22.19 at the midpoint for Order Clerks, $19.06 at the 25th percentile and $26.11 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Order Clerks for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $46,170 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $46,170 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else