Is 60 WPM a good typing speed?

It is comfortably above average and clears most administrative and customer service requirements. For transcription or specialist typing roles it is on the low side, where 75 WPM and up is more typical.

What is the average typing speed?

Casual typists generally fall somewhere around 40 WPM, and people who type professionally are usually well above it. The figure is less useful than it sounds, because it mixes together typists who have practised deliberately with those who never have.

Do employers check typing speed claims?

Some test at interview, many do not test at all, and almost none can verify a number written on a CV. That asymmetry is the reason a checkable certificate is worth more than a claimed figure, even when nobody asks for one.

What Typing Speed Do Employers Actually Require?

Most roles that specify a typing speed ask for 40–90 WPM, and 60 is the figure that appears most often. Here is what drives the difference, and why accuracy usually matters more.

13 August 2026

The short answer

Roles that state a typing requirement almost always land between 40 and 90 words per minute, and 60 is the number that appears most often in administrative listings. Below 40 is rarely advertised because it is close to the speed of someone who has never practised; above 90 is rare because very few jobs genuinely need it, and the ones that do — medical transcription in particular — tend to say so explicitly.

That range is wide because the requirement is doing different work in different jobs. In a customer service role it is a proxy for whether you can keep notes during a call. In transcription it is the throughput of the job itself. The same number means different things, which is why comparing a listing's figure against your own best score is less useful than it looks.

Why the number varies so much

Three things move the requirement, and understanding them tells you more than any table can.

Whether typing is the work or supports the work: A transcriptionist is paid for typed output, so speed is throughput and it is measured tightly. An administrative assistant types constantly but is paid for judgement and organisation, so the figure is a floor rather than a target.
Whether someone is waiting: Live chat has a customer watching a typing indicator. Email does not. Roles with a person waiting at the other end ask for more, even when the total volume of typing is lower.
What the text is made of: Ordinary prose is the easiest thing to type quickly. Numbers, codes, legal citations and clinical terminology are all slower for the same typist, so a listing asking 55 WPM of legal documents is asking for more skill than one asking 60 WPM of general correspondence.

Accuracy is usually the real requirement

Speed is the number employers advertise, and accuracy is the number that decides whether your work is usable. This is not a platitude — it falls out of how typing speed is measured.

A word, by convention, is five characters. Net WPM counts only the characters you got right: correct characters, divided by five, divided by minutes. Raw WPM counts everything you typed. The gap between the two is the cost of your errors, and it widens fast. Typing at a raw 80 WPM with 90% accuracy produces less usable text than typing at a raw 65 WPM with 99% accuracy — and the second typist is producing text that nobody has to go back and fix.

This is why serious tests gate on both, and why a certificate that reports speed without accuracy is not telling an employer what they need to know. It is also why pushing for a faster score by accepting more mistakes is a way to get a worse result that looks better.

What to do about a specific job

If the listing states a number, treat it as a floor and clear it with margin — being exactly at the threshold on your best-ever run is not the same as being reliably above it. If the listing states no number, the requirement still exists informally, and the ranges by role are the best available guide.

If you are between jobs and want one number to aim at, 60 WPM at high accuracy clears the majority of administrative and support listings. It is a realistic target from a standing start with consistent practice, and it is the point where typing stops being the thing that slows you down.

Common questions

Is 60 WPM a good typing speed?: It is comfortably above average and clears most administrative and customer service requirements. For transcription or specialist typing roles it is on the low side, where 75 WPM and up is more typical.
What is the average typing speed?: Casual typists generally fall somewhere around 40 WPM, and people who type professionally are usually well above it. The figure is less useful than it sounds, because it mixes together typists who have practised deliberately with those who never have.
Do employers check typing speed claims?: Some test at interview, many do not test at all, and almost none can verify a number written on a CV. That asymmetry is the reason a checkable certificate is worth more than a claimed figure, even when nobody asks for one.

Measure yours properly

TypeCred times every keystroke, scores each key for accuracy and hesitation, and — if you want it — issues a signed certificate an employer can check for themselves. Everything is analysed in your own browser.