{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/file-clerks/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "File Clerks", "soc_code": "43-4071", "category": "Office", "us_employment": 73440, "median_annual_wage": 43600 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 16, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 4, "embodiment": 7, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 2, "judgment_accountability": 2 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Alphanumeric sorting, indexing by patient MRN or case number, keying metadata into an EDMS, and flagging files past a retention date are rule-based operations that OCR plus a records system executes without a person; the 4 rather than 0 reflects the residual work of reconciling mislabeled or damaged originals that nobody scanned correctly the first time.", "embodiment": "You pull banker's boxes off shelves, run the scanner feed, unjam it, deliver charts to a floor, and shred — real physical work, but it happens in a climate-controlled office or basement records room with predictable shelving, which is why this sits at 7 and not with the field trades in the teens.", "liability_shield": "There is no state license, no certification exam, no signature line on anything you touch; if a file goes missing the HIM director or the custodian of record answers for it, and the 1 rather than 0 only acknowledges that HIPAA and court-records rules do formally name you as a handler.", "trust_premium": "Requesters know the file arrived, not who fetched it — attorneys and nurses phone the records line, not you by name, and a temp can cover your desk on Monday with no one downstream noticing.", "judgment_accountability": "The retention schedule, the filing convention, and the release-of-information policy are all written down before you arrive; your discretion tops out at deciding which supervisor to ask when a document doesn't match any existing category." }, "rationale": "The core of the job — coding, sorting, indexing, scanning and retrieving records, purging per retention schedules — is exactly what document AI and records-management software already do at scale, and the digitization wave that eliminated most paper rooms is still running. What remains is physical: pulling boxes, handling medical or legal originals, chain-of-custody moves within an office, and that keeps the role alive as a shrinking hybrid clerk/office-support position rather than a standalone file job. No license, no sign-off, no client relationship insulates it.", "outlook": "Employment keeps contracting sharply through the 2030s as paper archives finish digitizing; the survivors are absorbed into records-management and health-information roles that administer systems rather than shelves.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Backfile conversion and legacy-paper handling in domains where originals must be physically preserved — court exhibit rooms under state record-retention statutes, hospital legacy charts, land/deed registries, and litigation hold boxes. Wet-signature originals, sealed exhibits, and radiographic film cannot be shredded post-scan, so physical pull/refile/chain-of-custody work persists as the last defensible tier. If a state judiciary or medical board tightens original-document retention rather than permitting scan-and-destroy, this holds or rises modestly.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Certified evidence-handling roles: if courts extend chain-of-custody attestation requirements (already routine for evidence technicians and some ediscovery custodians under FRE 901/902(13)-(14) authentication practice) to records custodians generally, requiring a named human to attest that a produced record is the complete original set. A named custodian-of-record affidavit is already demanded in many civil productions; formalizing it as a credentialed role would attach a person to the signature.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Task-mix shift: once indexing and OCR classification are automated, what remains is exception handling — deciding whether a document falls under legal hold, whether a purge is defensible, whether a privileged item was mis-tagged. Where the file clerk role merges into records-management/RIM analyst work carrying destruction-authorization sign-off, the surviving position owns consequential calls. This depends on the employer retaining a human approver on the retention-destruction workflow rather than auto-purging.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "If HIPAA, GLBA, or CJIS-style access rules — or an insurer's cyber policy — bar sending records to third-party AI/cloud processing, scanning and indexing stay in-house and human for sensitive corpora. CJIS security policy already constrains cloud handling of criminal justice data.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this occupation stays low. The levers preserve a shrinking remnant inside records-management or court-clerk job families, not the standalone file clerk title; headcount decline continues regardless of score. No route to a trust premium exists — no buyer pays extra for a human to file." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 118840, "wage": 30120 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 110020, "wage": 31700 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 102300, "wage": 32710 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 91560, "wage": 34090 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 85460, "wage": 36360 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 87250, "wage": 37290 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 82290, "wage": 38130 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 78980, "wage": 41270 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 73440, "wage": 43600 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -38.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "court-reporters-and-simultaneous-captioners", "title": "Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 34, "median_wage": 72420, "overlap": 66, "skills_to_close": [ "Troubleshooting", "Active Listening", "Equipment Maintenance" ] }, { "slug": "tax-examiners-and-collectors-and-revenue-agents", "title": "Tax Examiners and Collectors, and Revenue Agents", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 34, "median_wage": 62370, "overlap": 60, "skills_to_close": [ "Mathematics", "Critical Thinking", "Speaking", "Instructing" ] }, { "slug": "private-detectives-and-investigators", "title": "Private Detectives and Investigators", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 56, "median_wage": 51220, "overlap": 57, "skills_to_close": [ "Critical Thinking", "Systems Analysis", "Complex Problem Solving", "Speaking" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }