Economists

High pay & lowrisk Trending
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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
4.9/10
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

19% (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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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.
Jobs that also use this strength

Persuasion

Quite important
Why this matters
Influencing people to change their minds or behavior through conversation, trust, and negotiation.
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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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Show 3 more strengths

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.
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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.
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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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What users think

Based on 1,271 votes

46% 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 19% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Economists 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 Economists was $115,440 ($55 per hour).

The median annual wage for Economists was 133.2% 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

Slow growth relative to other professions.

The number of 'Economists' job openings is expected to rise 1.2% 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

Lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 15,880 people employed as 'Economists' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 9 thousand people are employed as 'Economists'.

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What people are saying (21)

Leave a comment
Yehuda Porath (Low)
12 Oct 2020 18:58
I'm an economist. Our "science" is made up of many things. Some of it, like the statistical work and data collection and processing, seems fairly roboticizable. Much of the rest - The interpretations, the use of theory to explain results, figuring out why the theory often doesn't carry over to the real world, understanding the human behavior behind complex systems of humans messing things up together, figuring out why This Time Is (or isn't) Different - all this requires a great deal of intuition, persuasion, creativity, and intuitive leaps, in addition to the knowledge, information, data, and models we learn. It doesn't at this time appear that we'll get AI that good within 2 decades. I suppose it's possible, we could hit the Singularity, but I doubt it in that time frame
Miguel Villavicencio (Low)
25 May 2021 04:14
As long as human interests define human decisions, economists will have an organic field.
Niko (No chance)
25 Jun 2020 19:44
The insights change as macro fundamentals change... a computer cannot understand the macro indicators, political influence, sentiment or expectations.. We still do not understand inflation
Jersey Jim
16 Jun 2025 17:33
Milton Friedman explained inflation very clearly.
Faisal Ali Al Zahrani
24 Feb 2021 13:07
There is no chance for Economists to run outta of jobs?!! Cause economists are indeed in demand in "High Demand" and economists are aware of automations and risk of losing jobs. So how the heck you would want a machine to take over the job?? Without human economists our economy will be unstable and not accurate at all. We need human economists not "machines". Economists are highly important it's our society our life we couldn't live without it. We don't expect businesses to fail we need to accommodate that.
Preto
03 Jul 2024 18:10
Finally somoene that actually understands what economy really is
Anukul Bodile (No chance)
12 May 2020 09:04
I would have said that AI would replace economists if all humans were this mythical being called Homo economicus, someone who has no social affinities, no lapses of judgement or hang-ups, no capacity even for thinking about anyone besides him or herself.
Nerd sry
28 Oct 2020 05:06
Ahh yes, the assumption that humans are "rational decision-makers" in neoclassical models of economics. These optimization patterns not even close to the way our (non-robot) brains make decisions... Completely agree
Gino (No chance)
07 Jan 2020 03:04
La economia es la accion humana como diria ludwig von mises es imposible hacer economia sin humanos. Economics is human action, as Ludwig von Mises would say, it is impossible to do economics without humans.
Carlos Plácido Teixeira (Moderate)
14 Aug 2021 01:10
The profession is full of routines in its analytical processes. Already today, recommendations for the best investments in bonds and stocks are starting to be made by artificial intelligence systems. If professionals insist on exclusively using econometric tools, then the probability tends to be even greater.
Chris (No chance)
17 Jan 2021 20:46
Requires outside the box thinking that can't be programmed into a robot
Jim
03 Apr 2025 01:45
Outside the box thinking? 90% of papers are regurgitated from old sources and new theories are collectively dismissed at the first chance. Keynesian economics basically is economics and the whole field is a big mono-culture.
Phillip Tussing
10 Aug 2020 03:00
Ha ha ha! OF COURSE economists will not be replaced! As Ludwig von Mises might say, it is impossible to "do economics" without humans. Ah, but teaching undergraduate economics can be done by pre-recorded videos, with grading done simply and automatically, and supervised by a few economists. And of course all the number-crunching required for corporate economics can be done by algorithms, supervised by a few human economists. And almost all the number-crunching in research work can be done by programs overseen by a few research economists. So... there will still be a few economics jobs...
rle (Highly likely)
08 Aug 2020 14:53
If economist continue to create use regression analysis only looking at prior data then yes, there is no need to pay an analyst 100K to click a button anyone can do in excel. I've worked to automate these roles & actuarial positions.
Lol (No chance) (No chance)
28 Oct 2020 05:44
The automation of analysis and modeling is a great and useful tool for economists (and actuaries). However, as time goes on, there is exponentially more "prior data" you were using with your automation. As new data is generated every day, we are constantly analyzing it to improve both the assumptions on which we base our models and our modeling techniques themselves. I agree with you that the field will become automated, but not in the way that you mean it: as a one-time formula where you click a button and "the answer" is computed. Because economics (and actuarial science) are far from being fully understood. Likewise, their models are far from perfect at generating an ideal solution. To achieve a perfect model, all relevant pieces of information regarding how every individual human will make every future decision must be known (which is impossible), but because we have more data and analysis tools every day, the practice of studying economics will continue to be a valuable and profitable area of expertise. Automation does not mean extinction!!!!
Tom
09 Nov 2021 18:27
It doesn't sound like you know what actuaries (and possibly economists) do. The spreadsheets full of calculations are a tool, not the product. The work you're describing is mostly done by uncredentialed junior "actuarial analysts" or even by interns.
Isaac Lemmen (No chance)
06 Mar 2020 21:10
It is mostly politics and rhetoric
levi eleazar de oliveira bezerra (Low)
07 Jun 2019 00:01
The economics sector studies human behaviour and is not a matter of exact since it requires creativity and study of society to be able to apply the changes and for this to happen and necessary the accompaniment to the effective result.
the truth (Highly likely)
09 Nov 2023 21:07
economists are inherently flawed in their predictions and prescriptions as they lack insight in sciences such as sociology, social policy etc.

they consistantly display an inability to model any form of human behaviour and the lack of these variables in their data have lead to perpetual disaterous global economic crashes.

AI will doubtless surpass human economists in the very short term and as a result, large, medium and even small business will dispence with the need for any form of human based economic processes which offer very little financial return for the cost incurred.
Jesus told me to own a gun (Highly likely)
03 Dec 2023 15:25
economics is renowned for it's extremely poor level of accuracy due to economists ideological cognitive dissonance. AI will easily replace the industry with higher levels of accuracy and improved reaction time to problematic variables.
Teg (Highly likely)
25 Jan 2021 02:40
Society will reach a steady state where economic policy will be easily automated
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Job description

Conduct research, prepare reports, or formulate plans to address economic problems related to the production and distribution of goods and services or monetary and fiscal policy. May collect and process economic and statistical data using sampling techniques and econometric methods.

O*NET-SOC code: 19-3011.00