Arts, design, media and sports
Court reporters and simultaneous captioners
Use verbatim methods and equipment to capture, store, retrieve, and transcribe pretrial and trial proceedings or other information. Includes stenocaptioners who operate computerized stenographic captioning equipment to provide captions of live or prerecorded broadcasts for hearing-impaired viewers.
Median pay
$72,420
Growth to 2035
0%
little or no change
Openings a year
1,800
Time to qualify*
13 months
* From a bachelor's degree in an unrelated field.
Pay
Court reporters and simultaneous captioners
Getting in
- Typical entry education
- Postsecondary nondegree award
- On-the-job training
- Short-term on-the-job training
- Prior experience
- None
Calculate your switch to court reporters and simultaneous captioners
What the work is like
Dealing with the public
Unpleasant or angry people
Time pressure
Cost of a mistake
Freedom to make decisions
Repeating the same tasks
Time sitting
Time standing
Court reporters and simultaneous captioners: 43% usually work over 40 hours a week
Core tasks
- Provide transcripts of proceedings upon request of judges, lawyers, or the public.
- Record symbols on computer storage media and use computer aided transcription to translate and display them as text.
- Record verbatim proceedings of courts, legislative assemblies, committee meetings, and other proceedings, using computerized recording equipment, electronic stenograph machines, or stenomasks.
- Record depositions and other proceedings for attorneys.
- Ask speakers to clarify inaudible statements.
- Proofread transcripts for correct spelling of words.
- File a legible transcript of records of a court case with the court clerk's office.
- Transcribe recorded proceedings in accordance with established formats.
Also called: Captioner · Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) · Court Recorder · Court Reporter · Court Stenographer · Deposition Reporter · Digital Court Reporter · Official Court Reporter
Outlook and AI
Court reporters and simultaneous captioners held 19,900 jobs in 2025. BLS projects 19,900 by 2035 (0%, little or no change; all jobs: +3.5%).
Capital/labor substitution - share decreases as simultaneous captioning is increasingly done by artificial intelligence (AI), especially for video content.
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