{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/financial-clerks-all-other/", "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": "Financial Clerks, All Other", "soc_code": "43-3099", "category": "Office", "us_employment": 36260, "median_annual_wage": 53830 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 17, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 5, "embodiment": 3, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 4, "judgment_accountability": 4 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Matching remittance advice to open invoices, keying batch deposits, flagging accounts that don't tie, and pulling a standing weekly report are all structured-input/structured-output tasks that ERP modules and RPA scripts already do end-to-end — the 5 rather than a 0 reflects the residual chasing of a vendor whose paperwork never arrived and the unreconciled item nobody documented.", "embodiment": "The physical component is walking to a printer, opening mail, pulling a folder from a file room, or scanning a stack for imaging — real but incidental, which is why it sits at 3 and not at 0.", "liability_shield": "No state licence, no bonding requirement, no CPA-style attestation: your reconciliation is reviewed and signed off by an accountant or controller, and the 1 exists only because some employers require a bond or background check for cash-handling roles.", "trust_premium": "You have named counterparties — the AP contact at a recurring vendor, the branch that calls when a wire posts wrong — but the work product is a correct ledger entry that nobody attributes to you, so the relationship smooths the job rather than being the job.", "judgment_accountability": "Discretion runs to deciding whether a $12 variance is worth escalating or whether a document is complete enough to process; the dollar thresholds, approval routes, and escalation rules come from a controller's written policy, which is why this is 4 and not the 8-plus you'd give someone setting those thresholds." }, "rationale": "This residual clerk category is built out of exactly the work software eats first: keying transactions into financial systems, reconciling account records against statements, checking documents for completeness, chasing missing paperwork, and generating routine reports. There is no licensure, no signature liability, and the modal worker executes defined procedures on defined inputs rather than making judgment calls. The small surviving slice is exception handling — the odd transaction that doesn't reconcile, the customer or vendor who needs a phone call, the audit request that requires digging through history.", "outlook": "Employment in this catch-all clerical category will keep contracting as ERP automation, bank feeds, and document-reading AI absorb the keying and reconciliation work; the residual jobs will be fewer, broader, and centered on exceptions, audits, and system administration.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: as RPA/AI absorbs keying, matching and report generation, the residual role collapses onto exception handling — unreconciled items, vendor disputes, audit trail reconstruction, and 'the system says X but the document says Y' cases. This is a genuine two-tier job and the surviving tier is the judgment tier; the count shrinks but the remaining job scores higher.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Sarbanes-Oxley 404 / PCAOB AS 2201 pressure on ICFR for AI-generated journal entries: if external auditors and audit committees require a named human preparer-reviewer signoff on machine-proposed entries and reconciliations (segregation-of-duties and management-review-control evidence that an AI cannot satisfy), the reconciliation clerk becomes the documented control owner. Watch PCAOB inspection findings on automated controls and SEC comment letters on AI in the close process.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "BSA/AML sector specifically: FinCEN and FFIEC guidance already expects a human disposition decision on automated transaction-monitoring alerts, with the SAR filed under an accountable institution officer. If clerks in bank back offices are formally designated alert-dispositioning staff under the AML program, personal regulatory exposure attaches.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Escalation authority formalized: if the residual role owns the write-off threshold, the decision to release a held payment, or whether an unmatched item is fraud versus error — with a dollar authority limit in the delegation-of-authority matrix — the role owns consequential calls rather than routing them.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only: counterparty-facing collections and vendor dispute work where the other party is a person who will not resolve with a bot. Not a general premium — buyers do not pay extra for human data entry, and no plausible mechanism makes them.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this stays a low-scoring occupation. The levers raise the score of the surviving role, not the headcount — an exception-handling tier that is 15% the size of today's clerk pool scoring 35 is still 85% displacement. There is no licensure body for financial clerks and no realistic path to creating one." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 32260, "wage": 39970 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 31010, "wage": 41020 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 30500, "wage": 42420 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 30470, "wage": 44160 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 30310, "wage": 46900 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 41850, "wage": 47130 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 44520, "wage": 49940 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 37030, "wage": 52150 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 36260, "wage": 53830 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 12.4, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }