Career Explorer Office and admin
Changing shape
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks
Compute, classify, and record numerical data to keep financial records complete. Perform any combination of routine calculating, posting, and verifying duties to obtain primary financial data for use in maintaining accounting records. May also check the accuracy of figures, calculations, and postings pertaining to business transactions recorded by other workers.
Among the careers AI is changing fastest: more resilient than 2% of the 831 careers we score. AI exposure is very high (the Bureau of Labor Statistics rates it very high), and US jobs are projected to change by -5.6% by 2035, expected to shrink.
AI can do many of the tasks, and hiring is expected to grow slower than average or to shrink. The job is likely to change, so build the human parts of it.
- Median pay (2025)
- $50,670
- Job growth to 2035
- -5.6%
- Openings a year
- 144,000
- People doing it (2025)
- 1.5 million
- Usual route in
- Some college, then moderate on-the-job training
Where people already use AI for this work
- Evaluate the quality or accuracy of data
- Calculate financial data
- Compile records, documentation, or other data
From Microsoft Research, Working with AI (2025).
Work AI rarely helps with
- Reconcile financial data
- Maintain sales or financial records
- Monitor operations to ensure compliance with regulations or standards
What the work looks like
- Operate computers programmed with accounting software to record, store, and analyze information.
- Prepare and process payroll information.
- Check figures, postings, and documents for correct entry, mathematical accuracy, and proper codes.
- Prepare bank deposits by compiling data from cashiers, verifying and balancing receipts, and sending cash, checks, or other forms of payment to banks.
- Comply with federal, state, and company policies, procedures, and regulations.
From O*NET 31.0, US Department of Labor.
What the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects
- Fewer of these jobs, as automated bookkeeping software will allow more bookkeeping work to be done by fewer employees.
Careers using similar strengths, with a stronger outlook
- Billing and posting clerksChanging shape, Index 3, -0.1%
- Meter readers, utilitiesHuman edge, steady, Index 10, -10.5%
- Information and record clerks, all otherChanging shape, Index 7, +0.8%
- Communications equipment operators, all otherChanging shape, Index 5, +1.0%
Also known as: Account Clerk, Accounting Assistant, Accounting Clerk, Accounts Payables Clerk, Accounting Associate, Accounting Specialist, Accounting Technician, Accounts Payable Clerk.
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Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; O*NET 31.0; Microsoft Research (2025); Anthropic Economic Index (2026); Eloundou and colleagues (Science, 2024); Felten, Raj and Seamans (2023). How we score. Updated 12 October 2026.