advice from a temp

As President of the IBM Selectric Club, I mourn the passing of an era when a girl could make a living just by typing fast. Well, you had to be accurate too. But compared what jobs require of today, that was really asking very little. Your skill level = your value; it was that simple. 

Even without a college degree, a young woman could earn enough to support herself. OK, albeit humbly, but still comfortably in the context of being an adventuresome young person. 

The best part of temporary jobs was you weren’t stuck. If the job was horrible, or the boss was a jerk, you didn’t care. Within a few weeks, you knew you would be moving on to greener, and sometimes to sometimes more glamorous places.

At its peak, from the 1950s–1960s), the typing pool was standard infrastructure in large offices; federal pay surveys tracked Typist I/II as core clerical jobs. 

· In 1966, mean U.S. salaries for typists were $4,376 (Typist I) and $4,876 (Typist II); senior stenographersaveraged $5,364—which comes to roughly $41–51k annually in 2024 dollars (with a rough CPI conversion).

I clacked my first key on my mother’s old Underwood manual in 1952. In High School, we started on manual typewriters for a whole semester before moving up to clunky electric models that would leave a bruise where the carriage return hits you. I was up to 35-wpm (Words Per Minute) when I graduated.

Years and many jobs later, I nearly fainted when I first saw a sleek, purring blue IBM Selectric typewriter. We fell madly in love. My fingers danced nimbly up and down her keyboard. By the time my typing speed reached 90-wpm, technology advanced me to a Self-correcting IBM Selectric II. I nearly wept with joy. No more Correctatype!

Then it was goodbye, IBM Selectric, and hello MT/ST. From the MT/ST to the Mag Card to the Composer to the stars, I typed my way into a job teaching people to use the brand-new IBM Personal Computer. My skills definitely equaled my value.

But now, that era is over, as all eras must be. What demonstrable skill can young people develop today that will carry them through this time of lightning-fast change and constant disruption?

As long as we humans still have hands, and control the machines through keyboards, I say, let that skill be typing. There may no longer be typing pools, but every job I can think of, whether it is game developer or NASA scientist or dress designer or online assistant, they all require you to use a keyboard. Get good at it. Get fast and accurate, no hunting and pecking allowed. It will carry you far.

And just for the heck of it, I just went into INDEED and searched for Typist Jobs within 50 miles of my home. Twelve came up, and they all paid an average of $20 an hour. Some more, with benefits. Now, put your hands on the home row and just get started!