Occupation / job
Postal Service 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 $62,130 midpoint sits $5.82 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 24% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Postal Service Clerks.
Employment stands at 73,720. Postal Service 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.
Scheduling, dispatch and material recording suit people who can hold a moving picture of where everything is and re-plan it the moment one piece slips.
How long it takes to become one of the 73,720 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
A quarter of Postal Service Clerks earn under $56,740 and a quarter over $70,890: 1.2x, and $14,150 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
At $56,740, or $27.27 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $6,720 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if you dislike being interrupted — the whole job is interruption, prioritised in real time.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 73,720 people employed as Postal Service 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
A 1.2x spread means the top quarter of Postal Service Clerks is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $56,740 and $70,890 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $56,740 and $70,890. That is $14,150 of range, with $62,130 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $70,890. Reaching it from the $62,130 midpoint is $8,760 a year; reaching it from the $56,740 that the bottom quarter of Postal Service Clerks earn is $14,150.
The distance from the midpoint up to $70,890 is $8,760 — well over the $5,390 down to $56,740. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Postal Service Clerks earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Postal Service Clerks is $29.87 an hour. The quarters sit at $27.27 and $34.08, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Postal Service Clerks. The self-employed are excluded, so $62,130 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $62,130 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Postal Service 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