40 WPM is good in the sense that matters most: it is the exact number a lot of employers print as their minimum, so it is the difference between being eligible to apply and being screened out. It is not good in the sense of being fast. Measured against people who actually sit down and take a typing test, 40 WPM sits below the middle of the pack. That combination is what makes 40 the most consequential number in typing. It opens specific doors, it closes others, and it only counts if it survives a longer test than the one most people use to measure it.

Here is what 40 actually buys you, where it falls short, and how to tell whether your 40 is real.

Is 40 WPM above or below average?

It depends entirely on which group you are being compared to, and the two common answers are both true.

Among adults generally, roughly 40 WPM is the figure that circulates as typical. It has been repeated for decades in office skills material and typing tutor marketing, and nobody attaches a source to it, so treat it as folklore that is probably in the right neighborhood rather than as a measurement.

Among people who take typing tests, 40 is clearly below average. The largest public measurement of typing behavior collected 136 million keystrokes from 168,000 volunteers, and the University of Cambridge summary of that research reports that the average participant typed 52 words per minute. The same write up notes that the fastest people in the study reached about 120 WPM. The full paper, Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, was presented at CHI 2018 by researchers at Aalto University and Cambridge.

So the honest reading is this. If you are comparing yourself to the general population, 40 is around par. If you are comparing yourself to the self selected group of people who care enough about typing speed to test it, which is the group you are in right now, 40 is roughly a dozen words per minute behind the middle. Neither framing makes 40 bad. Both make it improvable. What counts as a good typing speed walks through the full distribution if you want the wider context.

One detail from that research is worth carrying into everything below: faster typists in the study made fewer errors, not more. Speed and accuracy are not a trade you are forced to make. They tend to move together, because both come from the same underlying habit of not looking at your hands.

Which jobs does 40 WPM qualify you for?

This is the part that gets answered in generalities everywhere else, so here is a scorecard. The verdicts below are based on published government standards and the requirements that appear in current clerical and data entry postings.

Role category	Does 40 WPM clear it?	What the bar actually looks like
General office, admin support, receptionist	Qualifies	Most postings never state a number. 40 is comfortably enough to do the work.
California state clerical, Office Assistant and Office Technician (Typing)	Qualifies, with conditions	40 WPM is the published minimum, but only on a five minute proctored test.
Public safety dispatch	Qualifies at the floor, borderline in practice	Many agencies publish 40 as the minimum. Successful candidates often type well above it.
Entry level data entry clerk	Borderline	40 appears as a stated minimum on plenty of postings. Faster applicants are competing for the same roles.
Customer service and live chat support	Borderline	Rarely a published number, but concurrent chats reward speed. 40 feels slow at two or three conversations at once.
Medical transcription and scribing	Short	Postings in this category routinely ask for materially more than 40, alongside terminology knowledge.
Legal secretary and litigation support	Short	Document heavy work with formatting demands. 40 is a bottleneck, not a qualification.
Court reporting	Not applicable	Court reporters work on a stenotype machine, not a QWERTY keyboard. A WPM score from a typing test does not measure the relevant skill.
Freelance transcription	Short	Paid per audio hour, so slow typing directly cuts your effective rate.

The pattern is consistent. 40 WPM is a qualifying number for general clerical and public sector entry roles, and a competing number almost nowhere. Where a posting names 40, you are eligible. Where a posting names nothing, you are fine for the work but you are also not distinguishing yourself. Where the job is typing itself, 40 is under the bar.

If you want role by role detail with the published figures attached, typing speed requirements for jobs goes through them one at a time.

Why does 40 WPM matter for government clerical tests?

Because a large public employer wrote it down, and once a number is written down it becomes a screen.

California's typing certification requirements for state civil service applicants set a minimum of 40 WPM for clerical classifications such as Office Assistant (Typing) and Office Technician (Typing). The requirement is specific in ways that matter more than the number:

The test must be five minutes long.
It must be proctored, either virtually or in person.
The certificate is honored for four years from issue.
The state explicitly will not accept certifications from tests that were not proctored or that were shorter than five minutes.

Law enforcement dispatch centers use similar language. The California Highway Patrol's minimum requirements for Public Safety Dispatcher call for the ability to type at not less than 40 words per minute, require an official typing certificate before hire, and note that holding a certificate does not stop the agency from retesting you on site.

Two honest consequences follow from that, and I would rather say them plainly than sell around them.

First, if you are applying for California state clerical work, no online typing certificate qualifies. Ours included. The proctoring requirement is the whole point of the rule, and an unproctored browser test cannot satisfy it no matter how the certificate is worded. What qualifies is a proctored five minute test through a state agency, a department you are applying to, or another provider that meets the CalHR conditions. Book that directly.

Second, for the much larger set of private employers who ask for a number without specifying how it must be produced, a verifiable online result is the practical instrument. The useful property is not the PDF, it is that the employer can look the score up independently instead of taking a screenshot on faith. That is what our $4.99 verified certificate does, and the free result card you get after any test on this site stays free. The paid version exists for the case where somebody else needs to confirm the number without asking you.

Does your 40 hold up over five minutes?

This is the question most people never ask, and it is the one that decides whether your 40 is a real 40.

Almost every casual typing test you have taken was one minute long, and one minute flatters you. A short sample rewards a lucky stretch of familiar words and lets you sprint without pacing yourself. Over five minutes the picture changes: you get tired, your accuracy slips in the third and fourth minutes, and every correction costs you net speed across a longer denominator. It is entirely normal for a solid one minute number to come back several words per minute lower on a five minute run.

There is also a pure measurement effect that has nothing to do with fatigue. One unfamiliar word or one badly recovered mistake is a large share of a sixty second sample, so it can swing your score noticeably. Across five minutes the same event barely moves the total. Short tests are simply noisier, which is why the published standards specify five minutes rather than one. The 1 minute versus 5 minute comparison covers when each length is the right tool.

The practical rule: do not claim a number you have only produced once, on the shortest test available. If a posting asks for 40 WPM, the number you should be confident about is your typical result on a five minute typing test, not your best result on a sixty second one. Run it three times on different days. Take the middle result, not the top one. If that middle number clears the requirement with a little margin, you are genuinely at that speed.

If your scores swing wildly between sites, that is usually a scoring difference rather than a skill difference, and why your WPM differs on every typing test explains what changes between them.

How fast can you move from 40 to 60 WPM?

Faster than most people expect, because at 40 WPM the thing holding you back is almost always a habit rather than a lack of practice hours.

The habit is looking at your hands. Every glance down costs you the time to look, refocus, and find your place again in the text. It also prevents the finger positions from ever becoming automatic, because your eyes keep bailing your fingers out. People who type by sight tend to plateau in the 30s and 40s and stay there for years, not because they are slow, but because the technique has a ceiling built into it.

What actually moves the number:

Cover your hands. A towel over the keyboard, or just a firm rule that your eyes stay on the screen. Your speed will drop for a few days. That drop is the cost of the fix.
Learn the home row anchor. Index fingers on F and J, and return there after every reach. Touch typing finger placement has the full layout.
Type slower than you can, at higher accuracy. Corrections are expensive. A run at 45 WPM with two errors beats a run at 55 WPM with twelve, both on the scoreboard and in real work.
Practice on real text, not word lists. Punctuation, capitals, and numbers are where most people lose time, and word list drills never expose them.
Make the sessions short and frequent. Fifteen minutes daily beats two hours on a Sunday.

Someone at 40 who genuinely stops looking down usually sees 50 within a few weeks of consistent short sessions, and 60 is a realistic target over a few months rather than a few years. The variable is not talent, it is whether you tolerate the temporary slowdown while the new habit sets. How to type faster lays out the progression in order.

Frequently asked questions

Is 40 WPM good for a beginner?

Yes. If you are new to touch typing, 40 WPM means the mechanics are working. You have functional finger placement and you are past the hunt and peck stage where every keystroke is a search. The thing to watch as a beginner is not the speed, it is whether you are still looking at your hands to hit it. A 40 built on sight typing is a ceiling. A 40 built on touch typing is a floor.

Is 40 WPM enough for data entry?

For some roles, yes. 40 WPM appears as a stated minimum on plenty of data entry postings, so it will clear the screen where it is named. It is a thin margin, though. Data entry is one of the few job categories where typing speed is the actual output, so you are competing against applicants who type faster for the same role, and many postings ask for more. Treat 40 as the entry point and 50 to 60 as the number that makes you a serious candidate. Note also that some data entry work is measured in keystrokes per hour rather than WPM, and that alphanumeric entry with a number pad is a different skill from prose typing.

How long does it take to go from 40 to 60 WPM?

If the barrier is looking at your hands and you fix it, weeks to a few months of short daily sessions is a realistic range. If you already touch type properly and 40 is simply your current pace, expect it to be slower going, because you are refining an existing motor pattern rather than replacing a broken one. Either way, progress is not linear. Most people jump, plateau, then jump again. The plateaus are where the pattern is consolidating, so the answer is to keep the sessions short and keep showing up rather than to grind longer.

Does accuracy matter more than reaching 40?

For anything that gets certified or tested, yes. Published standards measure net speed with an error ceiling, not raw keystrokes, so a fast run full of mistakes can score below a steadier slower one. The research backs this up from the other direction too: in the 136 million keystroke study, the faster typists made fewer errors, not more. Accuracy is not the tax you pay for speed. It is part of how speed is built. Practice at the pace where you stay above 97 percent and let the speed follow.

Confirm your real number

If 40 is the number you are working with, the useful next step is not another sixty second test. It is finding out whether the 40 holds.

Take the five minute typing test, which is the same length the published standards use. Run it a few times across different days and take the typical result rather than your best one. If a job posting asks you to prove the number, and it does not require proctoring, you can turn that result into a verified certificate for $4.99 that an employer can look up independently at any time. If the posting does require a proctored test, book that with the agency directly. Knowing which of those two situations you are in is worth more than another practice run.

Sources

University of Cambridge, What makes a faster typist? and Aalto University, Observations on Typing from 136 Million Keystrokes, CHI 2018. 168,000 volunteers, 136 million keystrokes, 52 WPM average, fastest participants around 120 WPM, faster typists making fewer errors.
California Department of Human Resources via CalCareers, Typing Certification Requirements. 40 WPM minimum, five minute proctored test, four year validity, non acceptance of unproctored or shorter tests.
California Highway Patrol, Public Safety Dispatcher minimum requirements. Not less than 40 WPM, official typing certificate before hire, on site verification possible.

Is 40 WPM Good? What That Speed Gets You