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Postal service clerks

Also called Postal clerk, Post office clerk, PSE sales and service associate, PSE mail processing clerk, Window clerk

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 73,720 US postal service clerks, with median pay of $62,130 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 86,950, in May 2020. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 82,000 from 1926, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for postal service clerks: Automated Postal Center self-service kiosk, 2004 to 2025.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects little or no change in employment from 2025 to 2035 (-0.3%).

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Postal service clerks: jobs and pay since 1926 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5051

Chicago

Future History. "Postal service clerks: jobs and pay since 1926." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5051.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_43_5051, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Postal service clerks: jobs and pay since 1926}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-5051}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
180018251850187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Post Office Clerk (patronage appointment era)
Known then as Post Office Clerk / Railway Postal Clerk (civil service reform era)
Known then as Post Office Department Clerk / Window Clerk (federal department era)
Known then as Postal Clerk / Window Service Technician (USPS corporation era)
Known then as Postal Service Clerks (BLS SOC 43-5051)
Known today as Postal Service Clerks (BLS SOC 43-5051)
Projected to still be called Postal Service Clerks (BLS SOC 43-5051)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
74K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$62,130
Est.

≈ $60,537 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1792

February 20, 1792: President George Washington signs the Postal Service Act, establishing the Post Office as a permanent federal institution. The Act defines postal routes, sets rates, protects the privacy of mail, and provides for the appointment of clerks to receive, sort, and dispatch mail at post offices along the routes. Early postal clerks are appointees of the postmaster, who is himself a political patronage appointment. The spoils system will govern postal clerk hiring for the next ninety years.

Beat · 1883

January 16, 1883: President Chester Arthur signs the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Postal clerks and carriers are among the first federal employees placed under the competitive merit examination system. The spoils system, under which a postal clerkship was a political reward routinely overturned with each change of administration, gives way to a career civil service structure. Postal examination scores now determine hiring, and clerks acquire genuine job security for the first time.

Beat · 1890

Postal clerks in New York City form the nucleus of what becomes the National Association of Post Office Clerks (NAPOC), issuing a national call to all first-class post offices to send delegates to a founding convention in Washington. The formation of NAPOC signals that postal window and sorting clerks have developed a professional identity distinct from carriers and postmasters, and begin organising for better wages, hours, and job protection. Women appear at some urban postal stations as contract-station clerks in drug stores, particularly after 1890.

Beat · 1957

April 10, 1957: The Post Office Department installs the first semi-automatic letter sorting machine at a major facility. The machine uses operator keying to route letters mechanically to the correct bin, enabling throughput of up to 30,000 letters per hour, roughly double what an equivalent number of hand-sorters could achieve. The machine does not eliminate clerks, but it begins concentrating sorting throughput into specialised keying operators and reduces the total clerk headcount per unit of volume. By 1970, MPLSM frames operate at hundreds of processing centres across the country.

Beat · 1963

July 1, 1963: The Post Office Department introduces the Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) code. By the early 1960s, 80 percent of US mail was business mail printed on electric typewriters, and the ZIP code was designed to enable machine reading of destination information. The five-digit code reduces the memorisation burden on sorting clerks and, critically, makes the address legible to a machine for the first time. Postmaster General J. Edward Day promotes the ZIP code with a fictitious mascot named "Mr. ZIP."

Beat · 1970

March 18, 1970: Postal workers in New York City walk off the job in what becomes the largest wildcat strike in US history, with 210,000 clerks and carriers in 30 cities joining over the following two weeks. The central grievance is pay: full-time clerks start at roughly $6,200 a year; 21-year veterans earn only $8,440, barely above the poverty line. Many postal workers qualify for food stamps. President Nixon calls out 24,000 National Guard troops to move mail; the effort largely fails. The strike directly catalyses the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which converts the Post Office Department into the independent USPS, grants collective bargaining rights to postal unions, and provides immediate wage increases.

Beat · 1971

July 1, 1971: The US Postal Service officially begins operations, replacing the Post Office Department. The Postmaster General ceases to be a Cabinet member. Postal workers gain collective bargaining rights under the new structure, though the right to strike remains prohibited. The reorganisation creates the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which merges several predecessor craft unions. Under the first APWU contract, a starting postal clerk's salary rises to $8,488, slightly more than a 21-year veteran of the old department had been earning two years earlier.

Beat · 1982

September 1982: USPS installs the first computer-driven single-line optical character reader in Los Angeles. The machine reads a typed destination address, queries a zip-code routing database, and sprays a POSTNET barcode on the envelope for downstream automated sorting. By the end of 1984, 252 OCRs operate in 118 major processing centres, each reading 24,000 pieces per hour. This is the hinge point: for the first time, a major share of the letter-sorting task that defined the clerk occupation becomes machine-executable without a human in the loop.

Beat · 2006

December 20, 2006: President George W. Bush signs the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), which requires USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future, depositing roughly $5.5 billion per year into a trust fund. The mandate is unique among federal agencies and creates a structural financial deficit that consumes USPS's operating surpluses every year from 2007 onward. The resulting pressure to cut costs accelerates automation investment and clerk headcount reductions through the 2010s, compounding the employment effects of declining first-class letter volume.

Beat · 2025

Early 2025: USPS offers a voluntary early retirement buyout of $15,000 to eligible craft employees, including clerks, mail handlers, maintenance, and IT workers. Approximately 10,500 employees accept the offer, meeting the agency's target and removing roughly 1.7% of the remaining career workforce in a single buyout cycle. The program operates under the broader "Delivering for America" plan and is coordinated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy notes that USPS has shed approximately 30,000 positions under his tenure as part of the ten-year plan.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace postal service clerks? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
-0.3%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 43-5051 (Postal service clerks): 70.9 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 70.7 thousand in 2035, a change of -0.2 thousand (-0.3%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers. The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
27.8%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 43-5051.00 Postal Service Clerks. Shown: human-rated β = 0.278, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.148 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.407; GPT-4-rated β 0.315. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for postal service clerks

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereSort incoming and outgoing flat mail and small parcels using electronic barcode scanning devices, redirect missent pieces to the correct distribution stream, and flag undeliverable-as-addressed mail for return or forwarding processing.

Sort incoming and outgoing flat mail and small parcels using electronic barcode scanning devices, redirect missent pieces to the correct distribution stream, and flag undeliverable-as-addressed mail for return or forwarding processing.[1],[10]

Where your edge is

Develop speed and accuracy on the electronic scanning workflow; learn the Delivery Operations Information System (DOIS) dashboards so you can resolve sorting exceptions without supervisor escalation.

AI is sitting alongside you hereWeigh and measure packages at the retail counter, determine the correct rate class and postage using the USPS point-of-sale system (NCR Advanced Store), and advise customers on service options such as Priority Mail Express, Certified Mail, and USPS Ground Advantage.

Weigh and measure packages at the retail counter, determine the correct rate class and postage using the USPS point-of-sale system (NCR Advanced Store), and advise customers on service options such as Priority Mail Express, Certified Mail, and USPS Ground Advantage.[1],[11]

Where your edge is

Build fluency with USPS rate tables and service-level differences so you can quickly guide customers past what the kiosk cannot explain; focus on upselling insurance and tracking add-ons.

AI is sitting alongside you hereSell stamps, stamped envelopes, money orders, and prepaid shipping labels at the retail window

Sell stamps, stamped envelopes, money orders, and prepaid shipping labels at the retail window; process transactions through the point-of-sale terminal, balance the cash drawer at end of shift, and reconcile discrepancies using the Electronic Time Clock and accounting logs.[1]

Where your edge is

Keep cash-handling accuracy high; errors show up in daily reconciliation reports that supervisors review, and repeated discrepancies affect performance ratings.

Where postal service clerks go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

Experienced postal clerks who demonstrate DOIS proficiency, shift coordination, and complaint-resolution judgment are natural candidates for first-line supervisor roles within USPS or in other office-and-administrative settings. The step up adds scheduling and labor-relations responsibilities but leverages existing knowledge of postal operations.

What you'd add
  • · USPS collective-bargaining agreement basics (APWU contract provisions)
  • · DOIS and TACS supervisor-level reporting dashboards
  • · Progressive discipline documentation and grievance procedures
  • · Coaching and performance-feedback techniques
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of postal service clerks changed since 1792?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Pigeonhole sorting rack + ledger (hand-sort era)

    The tool of the postal clerk from the founding era through the 1880s was the pigeonhole sorting rack: a wall of small wooden compartments, each labelled with a destination town, route, or carrier. A clerk sorting mail would stand before the rack, read each address, and insert the piece into the correct pigeonhole. Speed and accuracy depended entirely on the clerk's memorised knowledge of post office locations, routes, and sorting patterns. A skilled clerk could sort many letters per minute by hand. There was no mechanical assistance; the entire intelligence of the postal network lived in the heads of the clerks.

  • Civil service exam + route memorisation (merit-system era)

    The Pendleton Act of 1883 transformed the clerk hire process: competitive written examinations replaced political recommendation as the gateway into the occupation. The postal examination tested clerical aptitude, arithmetic, and increasingly the capacity to memorise intricate route and scheme maps. A "scheme clerk" was a specialist who had passed a demanding memorisation exam on the routing patterns for a specific geographic area and could sort mail to hundreds of destinations from memory alone. This knowledge barrier made postal clerks a genuinely skilled occupational class within the broader clerical labour market, and it drove wages and status above those of private-sector office clerks who performed similar tasks.

  • Multi-Position Letter Sorting Machine (MPLSM, first installed April 10, 1957)

    On April 10, 1957, the Post Office Department installed the first semi-automatic letter sorting machine at a major facility. The MPLSM had a clerk at each keying position read the address and key a code, while the machine physically moved the letter to the correct bin at tens of thousands of letters per hour, roughly doubling the throughput of an equivalent number of hand-sorters. The machine did not eliminate the clerk; it required one. But it concentrated sorting throughput into a smaller number of specialised operators and reduced the total clerk headcount needed per volume of mail processed. By 1970 there were hundreds of MPLSM frames running in major processing centres across the country.

    Effect on the work

    The MPLSM began the long substitution of machine-aided sorting for hand sorting, contributing to the first rounds of clerk attrition at large facilities starting in the 1960s. Consultants estimated at the time that until most mail could be read automatically by OCR, the MPLSM operator remained more cost-effective than full automation.

  • ZIP Code (introduced July 1, 1963)

    On July 1, 1963, the Post Office Department introduced the Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) code, replacing the patchwork of zone numbers and route codes clerks had memorised with a standardised five-digit geographic identifier. For the sorting clerk, the ZIP code was transformative: instead of memorising thousands of individual post office names and route assignments, a clerk could sort any piece of mail into one of fifty state groups and then to a sectional centre, using a five-digit code that was the same on every envelope. ZIP codes did not immediately reduce clerk headcount, but they greased the skids of mechanisation: any machine that could read five printed digits could in principle replace a clerk reading a full address.

  • Computer-driven Optical Character Reader + POSTNET barcode (OCR installed Los Angeles, September 1982)

    In September 1982, USPS installed the first computer-driven single-line OCR in Los Angeles, a machine that could read a typed destination address, look it up in a routing database, and print a POSTNET barcode directly on the envelope for downstream automatic sorting. By the end of 1984, hundreds of OCRs operated in about a hundred major processing centres, each reading tens of thousands of pieces per hour. The OCR/barcode system finally made the hand-keying MPLSM operator redundant for typed mail, the majority of the commercial letter stream. Hand-addressed mail remained a partial exception; clerks continued to handle pieces OCR could not read. The POSTNET barcode was replaced by the Intelligent Mail Barcode in 2009, which merged all previous postal codes and tracking data into a single 65-bar code.

    Effect on the work

    The OCR rollout of the 1980s is the primary technological driver behind the decline in postal clerk headcount between 1990 and 2010. Each OCR-equipped processing centre required far fewer sorting clerks than the MPLSM frames it displaced, and the commercial mail stream shifted rapidly toward machine-readable typed addresses through the 1980s.

  • Automated Postal Center (APC) self-service kiosk (first rollout 2004)

    USPS began rolling out Automated Postal Center kiosks in post office lobbies around 2004, placing a round-the-clock self-service terminal in each lobby that could handle routine stamp purchases, parcel weighing and postage printing, and Priority Mail label generation without any clerk involvement. By the late 2000s thousands of APCs were operating nationwide. The kiosk did not eliminate the retail window clerk but substantially reduced the transaction volume reaching the counter: customers who only needed stamps or a simple parcel label migrated to the APC. The remaining counter transactions concentrated toward higher-complexity services: money orders, passport acceptance, Certified Mail, and customs forms.

  • Delivering for America automation + AI customer service (AI chatbot launched 2025)

    USPS's ten-year "Delivering for America" plan, launched in 2021, included the purchase and deployment of hundreds of new package sorting machines across the network, increasing daily package processing capacity to tens of millions of pieces. Simultaneously, USPS announced in 2025 a pilot of an AI-powered customer service chatbot on USPS.com, capable of handling package-tracking inquiries and delivery status questions that had previously reached retail windows or phone agents. The chatbot is projected to deflect a large share of tracking-related contacts from human agents, reducing inbound traffic that would otherwise reach counter clerks.

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Postal Service Clerks employment and pay by year

On record since1792
Latest US employment73,720 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$62,130 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook-0.3% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • Canada (NOC 64401)

    Employment, 2020
    7,375, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 64401 Postal services representatives, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
    Median pay, 2020
    C$48,800, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 64401 Postal services representatives, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
192682,000n/aEst., USPS Researched contextReport
1950120,000n/aEst., USPS Researched contextReport
1970n/a$7,000Est., AFL-CIO Researched contextReport
1987296,360n/aEst., CRS Researched contextReport
1990290,380n/aEst., CRS Researched contextReport
200378,520$39,790BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200476,870$40,950BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200578,710$48,310BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200681,670$44,800BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200779,500$45,050BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200878,250$51,040BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200973,690$52,530BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201067,320$53,100BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201165,040$53,100BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201269,310$53,090BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201371,910$53,840BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201471,910$55,590BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201578,660$56,790BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201682,030$56,790BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201782,890$58,550BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201878,830$55,280BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201981,170$48,330BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202086,950$50,150BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202179,320$52,290BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202277,690$56,200BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202378,130$59,570BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202478,060$61,630BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202573,720$62,130BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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