Archivists

Low Risk
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Occupation snapshot

What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
5.2/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

22% (Low Risk)

Low Risk (21-40%): This occupation has a lower risk of full replacement by AI, software, or robotic systems. Some tasks may be automated or assisted, but the role usually still relies on human judgement, communication, responsibility, physical adaptability, or practical decision-making.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Human strengths important in this job

These are human abilities and work contexts that are important in this occupation. They may help explain why parts of the role are harder to replace end-to-end, but they are not the only inputs into the automation score.

Decision-making and problem solving

Very important
Why this matters
Analyze information, weigh tradeoffs, and choose the best solution—especially when situations are ambiguous, high-stakes, or have real-world consequences.
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Communicating with people outside the organization

Very important
Why this matters
Represents the organization to customers, the public, or government—handling questions, concerns, and relationship-building through conversations, writing, calls, or email.
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Thinking creatively

Quite important
Why this matters
Coming up with original ideas and designs—creating new concepts, products, systems, or artistic work. This kind of open-ended invention and taste-based judgment is harder to automate end-to-end than routine, rule-based tasks.
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Coordinating others’ work

Quite important
Why this matters
Bringing people together, assigning tasks, and keeping a group aligned so work gets done.
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Developing objectives and strategies

Quite important
Why this matters
Sets long-term goals and chooses strategies and actions to reach them, weighing tradeoffs and adapting plans as conditions change.
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Show 2 more strengths

Active learning

Quite important
Why this matters
Keeps learning from new information and applying it to make better decisions now and in the future, especially when situations change.
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Education and training expertise

Quite important
Why this matters
Designing and delivering instruction—adapting lessons to different learners and measuring whether training actually works.
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What users think

Based on 138 votes

43% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted they are unsure if this occupation will be automated. However, employees may be able to find reassurance in the automated risk level we have generated, which shows 22% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Archivists will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

Based on user votes over time

View sentiment trend

How opinions have changed over time

Pay & outlook

Wages

Moderately paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Archivists was $61,570 ($30 per hour).

The median annual wage for Archivists was 24.4% higher than the national median annual wage, which stood at $49,500.

View wage trend

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Growth

Fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Archivists' job openings is expected to rise 3.8% by 2034

View employment trend

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Volume

Significantly lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 7,050 people employed as 'Archivists' within the United States.

This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 21 thousand people are employed as 'Archivists'.

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What people are saying (8)

Leave a comment
Jack H (Low)
13 Feb 2025 23:20
A lot of an archivists job is organizing and preserving physical documents so unless we see light speed advancements in robotics I doubt this job will be automated any time soon. Also, digitizing is an agonizingly slow process and a number of archives will likely never be digitized.
H Jon B (Low)
19 Aug 2024 13:34
First of all, there are many archives which have not and will likely never be digitized so there will be perhaps decades of hands-on work left to do before it's all available online. Second, many archives and documents collection practices are governed in most jurisdictions by laws and legislation. Therefore, having an in-house archivist around is good so institutions stick to legal documents and media retention regulations. Finally, archivists are like data architects. Any institution that accumulates records will eventually need someone to organize it and that organization of documents will require creativity and intuition to meet that specific institution's needs. Every institution is different and will require a creative human to design a system of organization.
بلعباس هجيرة (Uncertain)
23 Oct 2023 10:57
Due to the presence of archival tasks that are difficult for artificial intelligence robots to perform, they require pure human effort and intelligence.
Gavin Couchot (No chance)
06 Jul 2023 06:59
This job requires not just knowledge on history which ai can do but it is human centric for the most part Ai would not have the capability’s to understand it’s importants or significance
Sol (Moderate)
24 May 2023 23:31
Essentially data entry. Most sorting and categorisation can be more quickly, easily, and more accurately done by AI. Will become a sink for the overqualified and underpaid completing low-skilled data entry whilst the system completes complex archival activity.
Michael (Low)
07 Dec 2022 16:04
Physical preservation is a significant part of this job, so I don’t see how this can be automated without huge breakthroughs in robotics
Saddam (Highly likely)
16 Oct 2019 13:44
I am a History Graduate, my job was supposed to be checking records and keeping them in good shape in both paper and non paper. but everything is changed to electronic and digital for a long time. You just need to digitalize everything and store it. No need to have an Archivist. Save lots of money and when you need something you can use search engine.
Maria
13 Mar 2021 19:04
You have a very mechanical view of the work of an archivist. Scanning all? And who will pay for the preservation costs?
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Job description

Appraise, edit, and direct safekeeping of permanent records and historically valuable documents. Participate in research activities based on archival materials.

O*NET-SOC code: 25-4011.00