# Cost of Hiring a Data Entry Clerk vs Doing It Yourself

- Author: CheapBankConvert (https://cheapbankconvert.com)
- Published: 2026-10-17
- Category: The cost of manual data entry
- Canonical: https://cheapbankconvert.com/blog/cost-of-hiring-a-data-entry-clerk

> The cost of hiring a data entry clerk part time: wages, taxes and training per statement, compared with your own time and a per-file converter.
The cost of hiring a data entry clerk starts with the wage, about $19.88 an hour at the 2025 US median, and adds employer payroll taxes, training and the time you spend checking their work. For a 60-row statement, a part-time clerk can cost $10 or more once those pieces are counted, against your own hour or a $2.99 conversion.

## What does a part-time data entry clerk cost per hour?

A part-time data entry clerk in the US costs roughly the median wage for the job, plus whatever your local market adds. O*NET OnLine's [summary for data entry keyers](https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-9021.00) gives a 2025 median of $19.88 an hour, or $41,340 a year, from Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Half of keyers earn more and half less.

The median is a starting point, not a quote. Wages differ by city and state, and a person who can also answer phones or handle filing will expect more than someone hired only to type. A student working a few evenings may accept less. Use the median to sketch the budget, then check two or three local job ads before you commit to a number.

Part-time changes the arithmetic in one important way: you pay for the hours scheduled, not the hours of useful typing. If a clerk comes in for a four-hour shift and you only have two hours of statements ready, you either pay for the idle time or find other work for it. A practice with a steady flow of paper keeps a clerk busy. A household with one statement a month does not.

## Employer payroll taxes on a data entry clerk's pay

An employer owes payroll taxes on top of the clerk's wage. The IRS sets the employer's share of [Social Security and Medicare tax](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc751) at 6.2 percent and 1.45 percent, a combined 7.65 percent. Federal unemployment tax adds 6.0 percent on the first $7,000 of each employee's wages, before any credit.

The federal unemployment tax, known as FUTA, usually comes out much lower in practice. The IRS page on [federal unemployment tax](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc759) explains that employers who pay their state unemployment tax in full and on time can take a credit of up to 5.4 percent, which brings the effective rate down to 0.6 percent. On the first $7,000 of wages, that is at most $42 a year per employee.

State unemployment tax comes on top, and its rate depends on the state and the employer's history. Some states and some employers will also need insurance or other coverage. Those vary too much for a general figure, so ask your payroll provider or your state's labour office for the rates that apply to you.

At the example median wage of $19.88, the federal pieces look like this. These are illustrative figures for a clerk still under the $7,000 FUTA base:

| Item | Rate | Per hour (example) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Wage | | $19.88 |
| Social Security, employer share | 6.2% | $1.23 |
| Medicare, employer share | 1.45% | $0.29 |
| FUTA after full state credit | 0.6% | $0.12 |
| Total before state taxes | | $21.52 |

Payroll software or a payroll service also costs money each month, which matters more when there is only one part-time employee to spread it over.

## Training and supervision hours for a new data entry clerk

Training a new data entry clerk costs two sets of hours: theirs, which you pay at their rate, and yours, spent explaining the work. Even simple statement typing needs a template, a column order, a rule for debits and credits, and a way to check balances. Expect the first few statements to take longer and to need your review.

A rough plan for the first weeks, with example hours:

1. **Setup, about 2 hours of your time.** Build the entry sheet with fixed columns and a running balance check, and write one page of instructions.
2. **First session, about 3 hours together.** Type one statement side by side, then let the clerk type the next while you watch.
3. **Review, about 1 hour a week for the first month.** Check every statement against its printed totals and explain each mistake.

At an example value of $40 an hour for your own time, that is 2 plus 3 plus 4 hours, or 9 hours, worth $360. Add 3 hours of the clerk's pay at $21.52, about $65. The first month of training is therefore about $425 in this example, before the clerk has typed much at all. Spread over 100 statements it adds $4.25 to each one. Spread over 20 it adds $21.25.

Supervision does not end after training. The accuracy of hand-typed data drifts with fatigue and interruptions, and someone has to keep checking. The guide to [what a data entry accuracy rate means for your rows](/blog/data-entry-accuracy-rate) shows why even a 99 percent typist leaves wrong rows on a long statement.

## Data entry clerk cost per statement, worked through

A clerk's cost per statement is their loaded hourly cost times the hours each statement takes, plus your checking time and a share of training. For an example 60-row statement, that comes to about $10.76 of clerk time, plus about $3.33 of your checking, plus the training share. The table shows the pieces.

The example assumes a clerk typing at 20 seconds a row, a 10-minute balance check by the clerk, and 5 minutes of your own review. All figures are illustrative.

| Cost piece | Time | Rate (example) | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Clerk typing 60 rows | 20 minutes | $21.52 an hour | $7.17 |
| Clerk balance check | 10 minutes | $21.52 an hour | $3.59 |
| Your review | 5 minutes | $40 an hour | $3.33 |
| Training share, over 100 statements | | | $4.25 |
| Total per statement | | | $18.34 |

Without the training share, a statement settles at about $14.09 once the clerk is up to speed. Those figures leave out state taxes, payroll fees and idle shift time, so the real figure is higher.

Some offices have each statement typed twice and compare the two copies, a method described in [double-key data entry for catching typos](/blog/double-key-data-entry). It catches more errors, and it doubles the typing line of the table.

## Is hiring a data entry clerk cheaper than typing it yourself?

Hiring a data entry clerk is cheaper than typing yourself only when your own hour is worth clearly more than the clerk's loaded cost and you have enough statements to keep the clerk busy. For a few statements a month, the training and review time usually wipe out the saving.

Compare the same 60-row statement typed by you. At 20 seconds a row plus a 10-minute check, that is 30 minutes. At $40 an hour, it costs $20.00. At $25 an hour, $12.50. The clerk's $14.09 per statement wins against the $40 hour, loses against the $25 hour, and both lose against a conversion.

That conversion is the third column worth adding. CheapBankConvert's early pricing is $2.99 for a statement up to 10 pages, $5.99 for 11 to 40, and $9.99 for any five. You would still check the converted totals against the statement, which takes minutes rather than half an hour. The product is not open yet; [get started](/get-started) if you want an email when it is.

For digital statements with selectable text, there is a free route too. Copying the rows and splitting them into columns, as shown in [how to copy a PDF into Excel and clean up the paste](/blog/how-to-copy-a-pdf-into-excel), is often faster than either you or a clerk retyping.

## Hiring mistake: pricing the clerk's typing and not the checking

The most common mistake when pricing a data entry clerk is to multiply rows by seconds and stop. The clerk's typing is the visible part. The checking, the questions they bring you, the corrections and the idle time between batches are the parts that make the budget run over.

Look again at the worked table. Typing is $7.17 of a $14.09 statement, about half. The other half is checking and review. If you skip review to save money, errors flow into the books instead, and finding them later costs more than catching them now.

Two more hidden costs are worth naming:

- **Access.** A clerk who types your statements sees every account number and every transaction. Decide what they may see before you hire, and how documents leave the office, if at all.
- **Turnover.** Part-time entry work has people come and go. Each new clerk restarts the training cost from the top of this post.

## When a data entry clerk is still the right hire

A data entry clerk is still the right hire when the work is not a clean PDF statement. Handwritten ledgers, mixed paper receipts, forms that need judgement and documents that cannot leave the building all need a person. A converter built for text-based statements does none of that.

A clerk also makes sense when the typing is a small part of a broader job: sorting mail, scanning, filing and keeping a log of what came in. In that role, typing statements fills gaps between other tasks, and the idle-time cost disappears.

At the other end of the scale, a household gathering a few years of statements for a one-off need, such as the records in [bank statements for an adoption home study](/blog/bank-statements-for-adoption), almost never needs a clerk. The volume is too small to train anyone, and the documents are personal. For that kind of job, compare your own time with the price of converting the statements, and keep the files in your own hands.