Occupation / job
Word Processors and Typists
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
At $49,280 against $50,020, Word Processors and Typists sits $0.35 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
At 35,010 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
These roles suit people who want dependable indoor work with a clear task, and who would rather be accurate than visible.
We carry no verified training length for Word Processors and Typists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Word Processors and Typists earn under $40,800 and a quarter over $57,670 — 1.4x, or $16,870 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
Even the bottom quarter, under $40,800, lands within $9,220 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Word Processors and Typists is not really the money.
Avoid it if you need a role with a defined next step; these posts often do not have one.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 35,010 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
$40,800 to $57,670 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
In cash terms the middle half of Word Processors and Typists runs $40,800 to $57,670 — $16,870 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $49,280.
The 75th percentile is $57,670. Reaching it from the $49,280 midpoint is $8,390 a year; reaching it from the $40,800 that the bottom quarter of Word Processors and Typists earn is $16,870.
$49,280 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $8,480 above the bottom quarter, $8,390 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: $19.61 at the bottom quarter, $23.69 at the midpoint, $27.72 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
The $49,280 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $49,280 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