Job Check
Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks
Compile and record employee time and payroll data. May compute employees' time worked, production, and commission. May compute and post wages and deductions, or prepare paychecks.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Verify attendance, hours worked, and pay adjustments, and post information onto designated records.AI could speed this up a lot
- 02Process and issue employee paychecks and statements of earnings and deductions.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 03Compute wages and deductions, and enter data into computers.AI could speed this up a lot
- 04Process paperwork for new employees and enter employee information into the payroll system.AI could speed this up a lot
- 05Prepare and balance period-end reports, and reconcile issued payrolls to bank statements.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 06Review time sheets, work charts, wage computation, and other information to detect and reconcile payroll discrepancies.AI could speed this up a lot
- 07Distribute and collect timecards each pay period.AI could speed this up a lot
- 08Record employee information, such as exemptions, transfers, and resignations, to maintain and update payroll records.AI could speed this up a lot
- 09Issue and record adjustments to pay related to previous errors or retroactive increases.AI could speed this up a lot
- 10Keep track of leave time, such as vacation, personal, and sick leave, for employees.AI could speed this up a lot
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job loss5%of this job’s work time goes to tasks that people already do with Claude at work, counting tasks where AI only helps as half (2026).Anthropic, 2026
84%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 72% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 30% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
AI touches every main task of this job in some way. Your edge is judgment: knowing when AI’s work is right, and checking it before it counts.