A skill you can put on your resume as a number

What employers expect when it comes to typing

Browse listings for data entry, administrative assistant, receptionist, transcription or customer service roles and you will often see a line like “typing speed of 40+ WPM” or “fast and accurate typing.” Not every posting puts a number on it, but when one does, it is a concrete bar you can prepare for.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the work in plain terms. General office clerks type, format and edit routine memos, and the BLS notes that courses in word processing and spreadsheet software can help people who aren't already familiar with them. Customer service representatives, according to the BLS, need to be good with people and have some experience using computers, and their on-the-job training often covers computer and phone systems.

Customer service is a good example of why touch typing helps even when the posting doesn't demand it. You listen to a customer, look up an account and type notes at the same time. In research from Aalto University, self-taught typists spent about 41% of their typing time looking at the keyboard, while touch typists looked down about a fifth of the time. On a call, that difference is the difference between watching your screen and watching your hands.

Some employers set a formal standard. California state government, for example, requires a typing certificate of at least 40 words per minute for positions that call for typing. Typing alone won't land you a job, but it makes everything else in an office role, from email to spreadsheets to online forms, faster and less stressful.

When a posting says 40+ WPM, that is a skill you can train for and prove.

An honest look at the job market

We would rather give you the real picture than a sales pitch. The BLS projects employment of customer service representatives to fall 5% from 2025 to 2035, and employment of general office clerks to fall 6% over the same decade. Automation and self-service tools are part of the reason.

At the same time, these are huge occupations. Customer service representatives held about 2.7 million jobs in 2025, and general office clerks about 2.6 million, with a median pay of $44,770 and $45,010 a year respectively in May 2025. Because so many people retire or change careers, the BLS still projects about 289,500 openings a year for customer service representatives and about 249,000 for general office clerks.

In other words, the jobs are there, but competition is real, and applicants who can show solid computer skills have an edge. Typing is not the whole of digital literacy, but it is the foundation that email, spreadsheets, CRM software and online applications are built on.

If you are switching fields, say from retail, warehouse or restaurant work into an office, typing is one of the few skills you can build at home, on your own schedule, before you even apply.

Fewer jobs overall, but hundreds of thousands of openings a year. Show up with skills you can prove.

What to put on your resume

“Proficient in computers” says nothing measurable. Recruiters skim, and a concrete number stands out. Typing has an advantage here: it can be measured, and in the U.S. it is almost always stated in words per minute, or WPM, where one word counts as five characters.

Speed without accuracy is not worth much, so list both. A line like “Typing: 55 WPM at 98% accuracy (5-minute test, October 2026)” tells an employer exactly what to expect. Touchtypely shows your WPM, accuracy and error rate after every test and exercise, so you can report what you actually achieved.

When you pass the Touchtypely final exam, you get a certificate with a public verification link. You can add that link to your resume or LinkedIn profile, or send it to an employer, so anyone can confirm that the result is real. Be clear about what it is, though: it is not an official credential or a proctored test, and some employers, such as California state government, only accept proctored certificates. Think of it as a verifiable record of your result.

For the skills section of your resume, include:

• your speed in WPM,
• your accuracy as a percentage,
• the test length and the month you took it,
• the certificate's verification link,
• the software you type in every day, such as Word, Excel, Google Docs or a CRM.

A number with a unit and a link to verify it beats “proficient in computers.”

When the interview includes a typing test

Whether you get a typing test depends on the employer. We did not find reliable data on how often U.S. employers test typing, so we won't tell you it is standard practice. But if a posting lists a WPM requirement, expect that they may check it.

California's state hiring system shows what a formal standard can look like. A typing certificate must come from a test that is at least 5 minutes long, show at least 40 WPM, and be proctored, either in person or virtually. Certificates must have been issued within the last four years, and results from unproctored tests or tests shorter than five minutes are not accepted. Individual departments may also give their own typing test.

Five minutes is longer than it sounds. Many people can hold a good pace for 30 seconds and then fade, or start making mistakes once they get tired. Accuracy matters too, because some tests score net speed, which subtracts errors.

You can prepare at home. Before a test or an interview, it pays to:

• take a 5-minute typing test to see how you hold up over a longer passage,
• focus on accuracy first, since errors often cost you more than slow speed,
• practice the number row and symbols if the job involves amounts, dates, order numbers or account IDs,
• use the numeric keypad lesson if you will be doing a lot of number entry on a full-size keyboard,
• practice on a standard US QWERTY keyboard similar to the one you will use at work.

Speed without accuracy won't pass a test. Train both.

Free help from American Job Centers

If you are looking for work, you don't have to do it alone. American Job Centers are funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and offer free help to job seekers. Depending on the location, services can include career counseling, job search help, resume and interview workshops, skills testing and referrals to job training. Many centers also have resource rooms with computers you can use for applications.

You can find your nearest center through CareerOneStop, a free site sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, or by calling the toll-free help line at 1-877-US-2JOBS. In some states the centers go by a different name, but they offer similar services.

Training programs offered through these centers usually require an eligibility assessment, and the choices depend on your state and situation. A counselor can help you figure out which kind of training actually makes sense for the jobs you are targeting.

To be clear: Touchtypely is not an approved training provider, and we don't claim that any workforce program pays for it. It is a low-cost way to build one specific skill at home, and it can work well alongside a longer training program or a job search.

Touchtypely isn't a workforce training program. It is a typing skill you can build at home while you use the free help available to you.

Coming back after a long break

A long job search is common. In July 2026, 25.5% of unemployed Americans, about 1.8 million people, had been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, according to the BLS. If you have been at home raising kids, recovering from an illness, caring for a family member or coming back from abroad, you are not the exception.

It is natural for your hands to feel rusty after time away from a keyboard. That is not a reason to worry, just a reason to start calmly and measure where you are first.

That is what the typing test is for. Take one before you start, then again every week or two, and watch how your WPM, accuracy and error rate change. In a job search there is a lot you can't control. Your daily practice and the numbers it produces are something you can.

If you haven't used a computer much in years, that is fine too. The course starts with the home row, A S D F and J K L ;, and the on-screen keyboard and hands highlight the next key and the finger that should press it. You set the pace.

Your first test isn't a grade. It is the starting line you measure progress from.

A short daily routine while you search

When you are not going to work, days can lose their shape. A 2005 meta-analysis of 104 studies on unemployment found that, among unemployed people, coping resources were more strongly related to mental health than education or demographics. The resources the authors looked at included time structure. That is a correlation, not proof that any particular routine helps, but a fixed point in your day is worth trying.

When you are learning to type, short sessions work well. In a classic 1978 study, British postal workers learned to type most efficiently when they trained one hour a day, rather than in longer, more concentrated blocks. Touchtypely goes shorter still: a lesson takes 5 to 8 minutes, and daily training can be set to 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes. The study didn't test sessions that short, so treat that as our recommendation based on the same principle.

Daily training is built automatically from your weak keys, keys that are starting to slip, and a practice text from a genre you pick, such as business, science or history. After each text comes a short comprehension question, so you practice reading carefully, too. A routine could look like this:

• ten minutes of daily training in the morning, then job listings and applications,
• a 3- or 5-minute typing test once a week, not every day,
• extra practice on the number row if forms and spreadsheets slow you down,
• if a day doesn't happen, no problem, pick up where you left off tomorrow.

Ten minutes that are fully in your control, even in a week when nobody calls back.

What Touchtypely is and what it isn't

Touchtypely is an online touch typing course for the standard US QWERTY keyboard, on Windows and Mac, in a current browser with no installation. It has 26 lessons in 6 modules plus a final exam, ending with a module on numbers and symbols that includes the numeric keypad. The course takes about 2 to 3.5 hours in total, or about a month at one lesson a day.

Touchtypely is not an accredited training program, not a staffing agency, and its certificate is not an official credential. We don't promise that it will get you a job or a specific speed. What we do give you is honest numbers about how fast and accurately you type, and a certificate with a verification link you can share.

Office work also takes skills Touchtypely doesn't teach, such as Word and Excel, business writing and phone etiquette. For those, ask your local American Job Center or community college what is available near you.

We don't promise a job. We promise honest numbers about how you type.