Career Overview

Records & Information Managers develop policies and systems for creating, storing, retrieving, archiving, and destroying an organization's physical and digital records. They ensure compliance with legal, regulatory, and industry retention requirements, manage information governance programs, and often lead the transition from paper-based systems to electronic document and content management platforms. Their work touches nearly every department, from legal and HR to finance and IT, since accurate recordkeeping underpins audits, litigation readiness, and daily operations.

Salary Range (US, estimates)

Key Statistics

Education Paths

• Required minimum: Bachelor's Degree in Information Management, Library Science, Business, or related field — Most employers expect a bachelor's degree along with experience handling records, documents, or archives.
• Most common: Master's Degree in Library & Information Science (MLIS) or Records Management — Many senior records managers hold a graduate degree that deepens expertise in archival theory, information governance, and metadata systems.
• Accelerator: Certified Records Manager (CRM) or Information Governance Professional (IGP) — Professional certifications from ARMA International or ICRM validate expertise and are highly valued for career advancement.

Core Skills

• Information governance frameworks
• Records retention scheduling
• Regulatory compliance knowledge
• Electronic document management systems (EDMS)
• Data privacy and security awareness
• Project and change management

Pros

• Stable demand across regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and government
• Increasingly strategic role tied to data governance and cybersecurity
• Opportunities to lead digital transformation projects
• Transferable skills across many industries and sectors

Cons

• Can involve tedious compliance and audit work
• Requires staying current with constantly evolving regulations
• May face pushback from staff resistant to process changes
• Automation is reducing demand for lower-level records clerks

AI Impact on This Career

AI-powered document management and classification tools are automating routine filing, retention scheduling, and metadata tagging tasks. However, records managers remain essential for interpreting complex regulatory requirements, managing legal compliance risk, and overseeing governance strategy across organizations.

Automation exposure: Automated indexing, retention schedule application, duplicate detection, basic classification, and routine audit reporting are increasingly handled by AI-driven records management systems.

The human edge: Legal and regulatory judgment, cross-departmental policy negotiation, litigation hold decision-making, ethical data handling oversight, and change management during system transitions require human expertise that AI cannot replicate.

Figures are estimates for exploration — verify current data with BLS.gov.