How To Become A City Clerk: What It Is and Career Path

What is a city clerk and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

A city clerk is a public professional who serves as the municipality's secretary. They must be knowledgeable of municipal policy and demonstrate good organizational skills, as their duties heavily involve the processing, maintaining, and distributing of public documents. That's mountains of paperwork they have to handle daily. But it's all worth it to these often unsung heroes of public service.

City clerk don't necessarily need a college education. A high school diploma or GED is enough to get you through the door. However, a degree in business or accounting does give you an edge. Still, prior experience in managerial, administrative, or public office jobs will provide you with a more significant advantage in the job market than a formal education.

The average city clerk in the United States earns a yearly salary of $50,000. That's more or less $24 an hour. However, employers, like the City of Riverside, pay their city clerk a highly competitive salary of $60,000 or more on average.

ScoreCity ClerkUS Average

Salary

4.5

Avg. Salary $58,166

Avg. Salary $59,228

Diversity

4.3

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 1.21%

Asian 4.66%

Black or African American 9.99%

Hispanic or Latino 18.70%

Unknown 4.35%

White 61.09%

Gender

female 83.87%

male 16.13%

Age - 51

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 51

Stress level

6.3

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.7

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

8.1

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a city clerk

Explore city clerk education requirements

Most common city clerk degrees

Bachelor's

41.3 %

Associate

26.2 %

High School Diploma

14.4 %

Start to develop specific city clerk skills

Skills	Percentages
Meeting Agendas	12.81%
City Ordinances	10.37%
Payroll Taxes	8.78%
Meeting Minutes	6.63%
Utility Billing	5.51%

Complete relevant city clerk training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New city clerks learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a city clerk based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real city clerk resumes.

Research city clerk duties and responsibilities

Demonstrate strong math skills in managing inmate s accounts and calmly and effectively deescalating outbursts of belligerent inmates.
Prepare grant applications for water, sewer, EDA and CBDG.
Collect, analyze, submit to NYS town relate data.
Record information into QuickBooks for payment of bills and to issue checks.

Prepare your city clerk resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your city clerk resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a city clerk resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable city clerk resume templates

Build a professional city clerk resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your city clerk resume.