COOKED
This catch-all clerical category is built from record lookup, form intake, data verification, filing, and answering routine inquiries by phone, email, or counter — the exact work that document AI, chatbots, and self-service portals already do at acceptable quality. There is no licensure, no signature requirement, and almost no discretion beyond applying a written procedure to a submitted form. The modal worker sits at a screen in a records office; the small in-person counter component is the only part that resists.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
Median pay $41,360 → $49,500 -4.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
-0.2% 153,300 → 153,000 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -0.2% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~17,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
CodifierRecorderReporterRegistrarCode ClerkCrew ClerkDiet ClerkCreel ClerkTrain ClerkVault ClerkCoding ClerkVault KeeperVault PersonVault TellerDietary ClerkProbate ClerkRecord KeeperWeather ClerkElection ClerkRepresentativePedigree TracerVault AttendantVault CustodianAttendance Clerk
The BLS uses Information and Record Clerks, All Other for work that doesn't fit any named occupation, so it covers roles that have little in common with each other. Two consequences worth knowing before you read anything below:
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Core tasks are already automatable Pulling a record by ID, keying fields off a submitted form, cross-checking that they match the file, and emailing back a status — these are the four things that fill the day, and OCR plus a records-database query already does each one without a person, which is why this sits at 4 rather than in the mixed band.
Fully desk- and screen-based The only physical work is walking to a file cabinet or shelf, handing paper across a counter, and occasionally scanning a batch — real, but confined to a climate-controlled records room, so it earns 4 rather than 0 and nowhere near a field role.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence, no certification exam, no notary seal required to look up a record or accept an intake form; if a record is wrong the agency or employer answers for it, and the clerk's name appears nowhere binding — hence 1, not 0 only because some records positions require a background check to touch the system.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Decisions are of the form "is field 7 blank" and "does this request match the release-of-information rules in the manual" — escalate anything unusual to a supervisor; the 3 reflects that you do choose when to escalate, but you never own the outcome of the ambiguous call.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (4/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (5/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (3/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 9 of this occupation's 17 points (53%).
Embodiment (4/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 29/100, still COOKED.
Task-mix shift within records offices: once portals and document AI absorb routine lookups and form intake, the residual clerk work is exception handling — identity discrepancies, sealed/expunged records, fraudulent or altered documents, conflicting source records. Watch for job postings in vital records and court clerk offices retitled toward 'records exception analyst' or 'identity verification specialist'. This is a real two-tier job, but the residual tier is small and supports far fewer workers.
Physical custody work that cannot be portal-ized: chain-of-custody handling of paper originals, wet-signature archives, evidence rooms, and deed/plat books in jurisdictions where statute still requires paper retention. Raises only for the subset in courthouses and county recorders, not the modal screen worker.
Records-integrity rules that name a human custodian: state vital records statutes and court e-filing rules that require a named deputy registrar or deputy clerk to attest to a certified copy or an apostille-eligible record. If states extend certification-attestation requirements to AI-assisted record retrieval (analogous to notary law updates on remote online notarization), the attesting clerk becomes a required human signature.
Records access denial decisions under public-records law (FOIA/state equivalents) and privacy law (HIPAA release-of-information, FERPA) becoming explicitly non-delegable to automated systems — e.g. state AI-in-government-decisions bills requiring a human reviewer for any denial of a record request or redaction determination. Colorado SB24-205 and similar consequential-decision statutes are the template.
The limit. Even with every lever, this stays a low-scoring occupation. The levers apply to specific slices — vital records, court clerks, release-of-information in hospitals — not to the 43-4199 catch-all, most of which is generic intake with no statutory hook. There is no realistic route to a trust premium: buyers of record lookups do not pay extra for a human, and counter service is being replaced by kiosks. Headcount falls regardless of whether the remaining roles get more protected.
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 7,860 | $56,150 +13% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 5,470 | $58,720 +19% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 4,410 | $42,840 -13% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 4,320 | $61,760 +25% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 3,470 | $42,830 -13% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 3,210 | $58,190 +18% |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 2,740 | $55,040 +11% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 2,510 | $48,510 -2% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,920 | $74,940 +51% |
| Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA | 210 | $65,610 +33% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 1,060 | $64,940 +31% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 17. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.