Shipping and Receiving Clerk job description
146 verified openings in Shipping & Receiving
The desk is inside the warehouse, a few steps from the dock. Shipping, receiving, and inventory clerks check inbound loads against packing slips, record damage and shortages, enter receipts, build and label outbound shipments, book carrier pickups, and keep the inventory record agreeing with the floor. BLS counted 827,700 clerks in 2025; May 2025 median pay was $45,260, a tenth of them under $34,650 and a tenth above $62,190. The inventory clerk page here is the same occupation and the same wage line, separated only by what the day gets spent on.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
The first thing a clerk does with a load is examine its contents and compare them against the manifest, invoice, or order. Next come the documents that route material: work orders, bills of lading, and shipping orders, with requisitioning and storing shipping supplies, packing and labeling for shipment, and recording weight, charges, available space, damage, or discrepancy. When something arrives short or broken the clerk is the one who takes it up with the other company, contacts the carrier to arrange or redirect a delivery, and works out the method, route, or rate.
Common Skills and Technologies
Much of the job is a phone call about somebody else's mistake, which is why Speaking outranks even reading and listening here. The desk runs on warehouse management and inventory management software, both named outright in O*NET's in-demand list, with SAP behind them in companies that run it. Label making software, optical character recognition and scanning, document management, and compliance tools fill out the record.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Job Zone Two. High school is the typical way in: 75 percent of the answers in O*NET's survey say a diploma or GED is enough, though 12 percent name an associate's degree and 11 percent a bachelor's, and the last two or three percent some college or a certificate. Scanning and RFID have absorbed much of the manual recordkeeping, which is why BLS projects an 8 percent decline for the occupation to 2035 even while about 98,600 material recording clerk openings a year are expected.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 43-5071.00 Shipping, Receiving, and Inventory Clerks, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-5071.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 43-5071, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Material Recording Clerks, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/material-recording-clerks.htm.