Chemists

Moderate Risk
40%

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AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
46%
(Moderate Risk)
POLLING
34%
(Low Risk, Based on 470 votes)
Average: 40%
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
7.6%
by year 2033
WAGES
$84,680
or $40.71 per hour
Volume
83,530
as of 2023
SUMMARY
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
6.8/10
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.

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Calculated automation risk

46% (Moderate Risk)

Moderate Risk (41-60%): Occupations with a moderate risk of automation usually involve routine tasks but still require some human judgment and interaction.

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

Some quite important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Originality

  • Finger Dexterity

  • Social Perceptiveness

User poll

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 46% 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

The following graph is shown where there are enough votes to produce meaningful data. It displays user poll results over time, providing a clear indication of sentiment trends.

Sentiment over time (yearly)

Growth

Very fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Chemists' job openings is expected to rise 7.6% by 2033

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.

Wages

High paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Chemists' was 84.680 $, or 41 $ per hour

'Chemists' were paid 76.2% higher than the national median wage, which stood at 48.060 $

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Moderate range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2023 there were 83,530 people employed as 'Chemists' within the United States.

This represents around 0.06% of the employed workforce across the country

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

Job description

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

SOC Code: 19-2031.00

Comments (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
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.
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

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