What an order clerk costs in the US
The wage BLS measured across 75,200 jobs, what an employer pays on top of it, the pay in every state, and which of the job's core tasks already show up in AI use.
Medians for the whole US. Your own cost depends on where you hire, the benefits you offer and the hours worked.
- Median wage
- $46,170
- Hourly wage
- $22.20
- Loaded per hour
- $27.65
- Middle half earns
- $39,660 to $54,310
- Jobs in the US
- 75,200
Wage × 1.2455 for benefits and payroll taxes, from BLS.
An order clerk in the US is paid a median $46,170 a year, $22.20 an hour, across 75,200 jobs. With benefits, a small employer pays about $57,500. Of its 10 core tasks, 4 showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026, and in 3 of those Claude mostly did the task rather than assisting.
The work, task by task
The 10 core tasks O*NET lists for order clerks, most important first, and how each showed up in Claude.ai conversations in May 2026. The bar splits those conversations between Claude doing the task and Claude helping a person do it.
- 01Review orders for completeness according to reporting procedures and forward incomplete orders for further processing.
- 02Obtain customers' names, addresses, and billing information, product numbers, and specifications of items to be purchased, and enter this information on order forms.API: 97% did the task, 3% helped
- 03Recommend merchandise or services that will meet customers' needs.Claude.ai: 42% did the task, 58% helped · API: 89% did the task
- 04Inspect outgoing work for compliance with customers' specifications.
- 05Receive and respond to customer complaints.Claude.ai: 75% did the task, 25% helped · API: 98% did the task
- 06Check inventory records to determine availability of requested merchandise.Claude.ai: 81% did the task, 19% helped · API: 99% did the task
- 07Verify customer and order information for correctness, checking it against previously obtained information as necessary.
- 08Compute total charges for merchandise or services and shipping charges.
- 09Inform customers by mail or telephone of order information, such as unit prices, shipping dates, and any anticipated delays.Claude.ai: 83% did the task, 17% helped · API: 100% did the task
- 10File copies of orders received, or post orders on records.
4 of 10 tasks appear in the Claude.ai sample of the Anthropic Economic Index for May 2026, and 1 more only in its sample of API traffic, where businesses run Claude inside their own software. A task without a row had too few conversations for Anthropic to publish, which is not the same as none. Shares are of all sampled Claude.ai conversations, so small figures are normal: 0.04% of every conversation that month was about this occupation.
Pay by state
The median annual wage in each state and DC, and the same wage fully loaded. Massachusetts pays the most, $55,040; Louisiana the least, $37,520. BLS publishes no figure where its sample is too small, which leaves 3 gaps here.
| State | Median wage | Fully loaded | Middle half | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | $48,840 | $60,830 | $45,590 to $51,010 | 80 |
| Alaska | $37,590 | $46,820 | $36,230 to $43,930 | 70 |
| Arizona | $48,590 | $60,520 | $43,740 to $51,870 | 760 |
| Arkansas | $41,760 | $52,010 | $36,790 to $44,490 | 290 |
| California | $47,290 | $58,900 | $40,710 to $57,010 | 12,390 |
| Colorado | $49,530 | $61,690 | $41,150 to $58,680 | 1,970 |
| Connecticut | $47,500 | $59,160 | $40,780 to $58,850 | 710 |
| Delaware | $41,430 | $51,600 | $35,360 to $49,560 | 170 |
| District of Columbia | $49,150 | $61,220 | $45,380 to $57,210 | 170 |
| Florida | $44,380 | $55,280 | $38,830 to $50,960 | 3,270 |
| Georgia | $41,720 | $51,960 | $37,250 to $48,790 | 1,750 |
| Hawaii | $46,760 | $58,240 | $38,240 to $62,400 | 210 |
| Idaho | $40,110 | $49,960 | $37,720 to $52,920 | 90 |
| Illinois | $47,670 | $59,370 | $42,590 to $51,410 | 3,540 |
| Indiana | $44,340 | $55,230 | $38,980 to $51,020 | 1,800 |
| Iowa | $44,980 | $56,020 | $38,550 to $53,590 | 680 |
| Kansas | $45,200 | $56,300 | $36,780 to $48,440 | 310 |
| Kentucky | $40,620 | $50,590 | $35,740 to $46,570 | 930 |
| Louisiana | $37,520 | $46,730 | $32,020 to $47,460 | 660 |
| Maine | $47,750 | $59,470 | $43,210 to $52,180 | 300 |
| Maryland | $47,700 | $59,410 | $43,220 to $55,210 | 850 |
| Massachusetts | $55,040 | $68,550 | $48,140 to $63,390 | 1,350 |
| Michigan | $44,240 | $55,100 | $37,430 to $51,430 | 2,290 |
| Minnesota | $48,400 | $60,280 | $43,860 to $57,480 | 1,150 |
| Mississippi | $43,040 | $53,610 | $36,230 to $45,780 | 470 |
| Missouri | Not published | · | · | 840 |
| Montana | $42,000 | $52,310 | $36,400 to $48,630 | 60 |
| Nebraska | $44,060 | $54,880 | $37,290 to $49,190 | 440 |
| Nevada | $40,560 | $50,520 | $38,380 to $46,620 | 740 |
| New Hampshire | $48,540 | $60,460 | $45,970 to $55,550 | 390 |
| New Jersey | $46,270 | $57,630 | $42,660 to $57,520 | 2,640 |
| New Mexico | $41,020 | $51,090 | $38,470 to $52,920 | 310 |
| New York | $48,320 | $60,180 | $41,960 to $57,230 | 3,530 |
| North Carolina | $46,060 | $57,370 | $39,340 to $54,900 | 2,990 |
| North Dakota | Not published | · | · | · |
| Ohio | $46,120 | $57,440 | $38,790 to $52,910 | 3,810 |
| Oklahoma | $45,850 | $57,110 | $45,800 to $45,850 | 2,210 |
| Oregon | $50,260 | $62,600 | $43,260 to $59,190 | 790 |
| Pennsylvania | $46,840 | $58,340 | $40,690 to $51,410 | 2,570 |
| Rhode Island | $49,410 | $61,540 | $46,640 to $52,590 | 170 |
| South Carolina | $41,740 | $51,990 | $36,010 to $46,630 | 740 |
| South Dakota | $48,010 | $59,800 | $44,340 to $50,780 | 330 |
| Tennessee | $39,160 | $48,770 | $34,150 to $46,320 | 2,260 |
| Texas | $44,280 | $55,150 | $37,440 to $52,000 | 5,180 |
| Utah | $40,260 | $50,140 | $30,520 to $45,980 | 880 |
| Vermont | $49,950 | $62,210 | $46,900 to $56,620 | · |
| Virginia | $42,580 | $53,030 | $36,970 to $49,080 | 1,690 |
| Washington | $47,990 | $59,770 | $45,070 to $63,450 | 4,300 |
| West Virginia | $45,320 | $56,450 | $34,400 to $57,560 | 100 |
| Wisconsin | $47,750 | $59,470 | $37,750 to $62,030 | 1,540 |
| Wyoming | Not published | · | · | · |
The same benefits ratio applies in every state, because BLS does not publish benefit costs by business size for each state. The middle half is the 25th to 75th percentile wage.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure is copied from a public file. The only arithmetic is the loaded cost: the wage times 1.2455.
- Wages
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, occupation 43-4151 (Order Clerks). Annual figures are the hourly wage times 2,080 hours, as BLS computes them, so they already include pay for paid leave.
- Fully loaded
- BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026 (2026 Q2), private businesses with 1 to 49 workers: $37.64 an hour in total compensation over $27.88 in wages plus $2.34 in paid leave gives 1.2455. Paid leave sits in the denominator because the annual wage already pays it.
- Tasks
- O*NET 31.0 core tasks for 43-4151.00, the ten most important by their importance rating. A few occupations list fewer core tasks.
- AI use
- Anthropic Economic Index, release of June 2026, conversations from May 2026. "Did the task" is Anthropic's automation share, where the user directs Claude to do the work; "helped" is augmentation, where the user works with Claude to learn, check or iterate.
- Not measured
- What a particular business pays, and whether an AI system can do a task well. The AI figures count conversations about a task, not jobs replaced.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. AI use data from the Anthropic Economic Index by Anthropic, under CC BY. Wage and benefit data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What would an AI system cost for this work?
Put $57,500 beside the running cost of a system doing the tasks above, with the build counted in year one.
BLS wages May 2025 · O*NET 31.0 · Anthropic Economic Index