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

What is a principal clerk and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a principal clerk. For example, did you know that they make an average of $18.66 an hour? That's $38,813 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow -5% and produce -130,800 job opportunities across the U.S.

ScorePrincipal ClerkUS Average

Salary

3.0

Avg. Salary $38,813

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.6

Growth rate -5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.2

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.86%

Asian 8.30%

Black or African American 9.83%

Hispanic or Latino 19.18%

Unknown 4.16%

White 57.68%

Gender

female 89.08%

male 10.92%

Age - 50

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 - 50

Stress level

6.6

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

4.3

Complexity level is basic

7 - challenging

Work life balance

7.1

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a principal clerk

Explore principal clerk education requirements

Most common principal clerk degrees

Bachelor's

34.3 %

Associate

31.8 %

High School Diploma

19.4 %

Start to develop specific principal clerk skills

Skills	Percentages
Routine Correspondence	14.71%
Office Procedures	13.79%
Customer Service	12.10%
Data Entry	11.44%
Payroll	10.79%

Complete relevant principal clerk training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New principal 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 principal clerk based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real principal clerk resumes.

Research principal clerk duties and responsibilities

Manage orthopedic accounts regarding payment posting through IDX medical systems.
Assist in billing for road job details, ordering, payroll, and reconciliation of cash receipts.
Assist employees with payroll relate issues or other documents need such as access cards, W4 forms and accident forms.
Trust with a door key to open and closet the bank as well as combinations to the vault and ATM.

Get principal clerk experience

Generally, it takes 1-2 years to become a principal clerk. The most common roles before becoming a principal clerk include senior clerk typist, clerk typist team lead and senior clerk.

Prepare your principal clerk resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your principal 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 principal 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 principal clerk resume templates

Build a professional principal 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 principal clerk resume.

Apply for principal clerk jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a principal clerk job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do principal clerks rate their job?

-/5

5 stars

4 stars

3 stars

2 stars

1 star

Principal clerk reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Apr 2019

Pros

I love the high demands on how fast the grocery store is!I love the different personalities that walk in the store i love the customer satisfaction the ability to learn something new every day I love to be an example and help others go above and beyond the co workers i work with make me feel like I'm at home!it's about team work and self discipline having common sense to do your daily task as a lead!

Cons

We have are ups and are downs we can't please everyone but we can do are best to care and to handles different situations a certain way to the best of are knowledge just give 110%percent