Astronomers

Minimal Risk
Low High

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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
7.0/10
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

10% (Minimal Risk)

Minimal Risk (0-20%): This occupation appears difficult to replace end-to-end with current or near-future automation, including AI software and robotics. Roles in this range usually depend on human judgement, creativity, care, leadership, specialist expertise, or adapting to messy real-world situations. AI and machines may still change parts of the work, but the occupation is likely to remain a distinct human role.

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.

Thinking creatively

Very 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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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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Active learning

Very 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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Social perceptiveness

Quite important
Why this matters
Noticing others’ emotions and reactions in the moment and adjusting what you say or do based on why they’re responding that way.
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Persuasion

Quite important
Why this matters
Influencing people to change their minds or behavior through conversation, trust, and negotiation.
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Show 4 more strengths

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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Communicating with people outside the organization

Quite 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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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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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 498 votes

30% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 10% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Astronomers 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

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Astronomers was $132,170 ($64 per hour).

The median annual wage for Astronomers was 167.0% 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

Moderate growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Astronomers' job openings is expected to rise 2.2% 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 1,560 people employed as 'Astronomers' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 98 thousand people are employed as 'Astronomers'.

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What people are saying (21)

Leave a comment
John James Jones (No chance)
12 Nov 2025 22:19
the data centers bouta be death star sized before it could replace a good amount of jobs
Mansi (Low)
05 May 2021 05:10
Astronomy is the way of living, in my perspective robots or AI could be very useful for exploring the cosmos but the everlasting curiosity will remained in the human.
Mango (Low)
25 Jan 2026 15:33
It requires critical thinking and creating better connections between things to aid in analyzing data and AI can’t fully replace this, but it can assist, not replace
Umar (No chance)
11 May 2026 09:23
Astronomers can't be replaced by AI as it requires deep understanding of relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. It also requires creativity and complex solving skills.
HELLO (No chance)
22 Apr 2026 08:01
Because astronomers is a hard and complex job, that requires to have a very strong STEM background, and plus you need to be strong to fix and carry stuff in the spaceship, and AI can't do that
Tanish Kotra (No chance)
23 Dec 2024 06:49
Humans are intelligent, they don't stick on annoying rules at extreme conditions like AI do.
nany (No chance)
22 Feb 2024 12:19
Astronomy required thinking skills and development of news ideas based on the provided data, which cant be controlled by AI itself. Without a human aid it cant be possible

Aphiwe Stuurman (Low)
12 Sep 2024 07:05
Astronomy is the study of the universe we live in, to understand it. AI can help but it can never have the emotions humans may feel when discovering something new about our physical universe.
jenine
02 Jan 2026 23:29
You don't need emotion to do it though
Shadow (No chance)
14 Jul 2024 06:32
The level of problem solving and observing that is required is too much
Good Cheeez (No chance)
13 May 2024 16:17
because people have to do the math and learn for missions to be successfull
ryyyyeeadsffdfgn (No chance)
08 Nov 2023 14:33
because it can never think extremely logical and debate.
tammy
19 Mar 2021 03:59
Robots will do the analysis, but humans will still be needed to draw wildly speculative conclusions.
Jessica Tsao (Low)
07 Dec 2020 04:27
This job involves numbers and observing the cosmos, and the latter is neither outsourceable nor capable of being done by robots, since the study of the universe still requires an actual human individual to do the job.
Faisal Ali
12 Oct 2020 03:01
This is impossible to happen cause todays AI technology is still developing but when a human being looks at the sky through a telescope their curious enough to know the ''wonders'' of the universe! But because were just doing that were developing excellent technologies to other planets to discover the ''wonders'' of the universe. Robots like AI rover or ''curiosity'' are developed currently and sent to planets in our universe in order to find the unanswered questions of the universe. Things scientists still don't know the answer too. On the other hand astronomers won't get replaced by robot's, and that's because we humans need to discover the universe and learn things that mankind always wanted to know when there wasn't a possibility of enough technology to help us know and even human curiosity is so hard to kill. In this field of knowledge I think we only need the technology to help us determine something we don't know and even great advances to just make this field ''astronomy'' better than it was in the past. But as humans we're very curious for learning and discovering ''we're curious beings'' which means you can't just let us down.
Killbayne
19 Jun 2020 18:51
We need robots to automatically stack pictures
Purple (Low)
29 Oct 2019 14:09
I think we will be safe
BOBBY JOE
14 Oct 2019 13:03
You can even search up the definition of "astronomers" and find out why it's literally impossible for it to happen.
Murat Ergin (Highly likely)
17 Jul 2019 07:09
Sense of humor is important.
Jonny (Moderate)
13 Sep 2021 14:38
Eventually, it will replace astronomers. As an Astronomer, I hope it takes our job. Because we only stack here with 5% of the universe other 95% of the universe is untouched or undiscovered; besides, Astronomy is nothing without AI or ML. It is nearly dying like physics.
Pablo
02 Jul 2024 16:23
That's not optimistic

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Job description

Observe, research, and interpret astronomical phenomena to increase basic knowledge or apply such information to practical problems.

O*NET-SOC code: 19-2011.00