Chemists

Low Risk
Low High

Explore safer careers (2)

Lower estimated automation risk

Materials Scientists
12% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Pays better
11.8 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Directly reuses chemical properties, experiments, instrumentation, formulation, analysis, and product development.

Chemistry Teachers, Postsecondary
10% automation risk | Minimal Risk
13.9 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Applies chemistry expertise to lectures, labs, demonstrations, student feedback, and curriculum.

Alternative careers

Related career paths that build on similar skills and experience

Chemical Engineers
19% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Pays better
4.5 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Uses chemistry, reactions, process conditions, scale-up, safety, and troubleshooting.

Validation Engineers
25% automation risk | Low Risk
Pays better Higher growth
View career
Why it fits

Transfers protocols, equipment qualification, acceptance criteria, documentation, and quality evidence.


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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
6.6/10
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

24% (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.
Jobs that also use this strength

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.
Jobs that also use this strength

Coordinating others’ work

Quite important
Why this matters
Bringing people together, assigning tasks, and keeping a group aligned so work gets done.
Jobs that also use this strength

Coaching and developing others

Quite important
Why this matters
Helps people learn and improve through coaching, mentoring, and feedback. This relies on trust, motivation, and adapting guidance to each person—work that’s hard to replace end-to-end with automation.
Jobs that also use this strength

Consulting and advising others

Quite important
Why this matters
Provide guidance and expert advice to managers or teams on technical, system, or process decisions—explaining options, tradeoffs, and recommended actions.
Jobs that also use this strength
Show 1 more strength

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.
Jobs that also use this strength

What users think

Based on 485 votes

34% 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 24% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Chemists 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

High paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Chemists was $84,150 ($40 per hour).

The median annual wage for Chemists was 70.0% 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

Fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Chemists' job openings is expected to rise 4.9% 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

Moderate range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 83,250 people employed as 'Chemists' within the United States.

This represents around 0.05% of the employed workforce across the country

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

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What people are saying (13)

Leave a comment
Hardkless (Low)
03 Jul 2024 20:00
Very unlikely, scientists and other similar jobs are very difficult for AI to replace.
Ark (Low)
10 Nov 2024 07:56
Despite chemistry growing leap and bounds by computational and machine learning methods, real world results tend to deviate greatly from expected computed outcomes. Hence, chemistry as a field will always need human creativity and critical thinking to survive.
Will N (Highly likely)
02 Jun 2023 20:56
Chemistry, like law, is 80% lookup, 10% calculation and 10% inspiration
MLearry
28 Feb 2023 07:39
The profession of Material Scientists has a 22% representation. A Chemist must take Physical Chemistry, Physics, and an elective related to Physical Chemistry.

Aspects of Inorganic Chemistry, Physical Organic Chemistry, and Polymers (as a part of Organic Chemistry) are very relevant to developing new materials with desirable properties. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in the U.S.A. categorizes Chemists and Material Scientists as one and the same profile.

Job opportunities for Material Scientists do allow Chemists to be considered as Material Scientists when the Chemist has experience and multiple credits in Physical Chemistry, Polymers, and/or Inorganic Chemistry. Many Chemists follow this professional direction. In fact, some departments are even named 'Materials Chemistry'.

This fact indicates that one of these professions has an incorrect percentage representation on this website. Either Materials Science should have 51% (or a percentage much closer to Chemistry) on this website, or Chemistry should have 22% (similar to Materials Science). The large discrepancy simply reflects a mistaken view on the nature of their work.

Chemistry, by default, incorporates aspects of Physical Chemistry applicable to materials. It is suggested to reassess the activities of chemists to correct the percentage that has been flawed in a previous assessment.
G (Highly likely)
16 Apr 2024 16:50
It involves very precise instructions and repeated tasks. It also involves having a wide range of knowledge
Michael (Highly likely)
29 Feb 2024 15:59
Lab automation systems do already have a high impact on the number of jobs in the sector, especially in the Pharma industry. Analytical chemistry is a little harder to automate than the synthesis branch and might even grow in the future, but the days for synthetical organic chemistry are counted. GMOs do increase the pressure further, since its becoming much cheaper and faster to genetically modify bacteria and fungi into producing your product, than to develop complicated synthesis routes over several steps. Anorganic chemistry and material sciences might become more important, but will not be able to make up for the losses in the organic branch
Sobes (Low)
07 Mar 2023 08:38
A QC Chemistry Lab is usually run my corporations who would gladly shed as much human capital costs as possible.

There are autotitrators and autosamplers for many different equipment (Dissolution systems, HPLC, GC, UPLC, Mass spec and so on). These technologies have been around for decades yet analysts are still required to prepare samples, analyze them and then interpret and report data .

The two tenants which make a job susceptible to replacent by automation are Predictability and complexity. Some chemical analysis (more specifically wet chemistry, non-instrumental techniques) is more complex than what current automation systems can handle (i.e. chemical digestion of a sample, followed by extraction with a solvent, evaporation of the solvent) also sample quality is unpredictable (hence why QC labs exist, if every manufacturing method was flawless there would be no need for QC/QA).
Kyle (Low)
13 Jun 2021 21:43
Aspects definitely will be. I trimmed my own work by 80%. But the core field will be maintained, as I just got to do newer cool stuff instead of banal work
KPS
21 Jun 2020 16:20
Safer side..... That's good
Jay (No chance)
16 Aug 2019 19:34
The work of chemists is too technical for AI.
Álvaro (No chance)
08 Jul 2019 01:55
Scientists will never be replaced by robots
Ires (No chance)
14 Jun 2019 02:29
Automation will never overtake the job of a scientist
Anthony
28 Aug 2020 05:38
Seems to be one of the few good things about the chemistry job market. So glad I chose to study something different.

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Job description

Conduct qualitative and quantitative chemical analyses or experiments in laboratories for quality or process control or to develop new products or knowledge.

O*NET-SOC code: 19-2031.00