Historians

Low Risk
32%

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Vote Comments (12)
AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
35%
(Low Risk)
POLLING
29%
(Low Risk, Based on 351 votes)
Average: 32%
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
5.7%
by year 2033
WAGES
$72,890
or $35.04 per hour
Volume
3,040
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
6.3/10
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

35% (Low Risk)

Low Risk (21-40%): Jobs in this level have a limited risk of automation, as they demand a mix of technical and human-centric skills.

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:

  • Social Perceptiveness

  • Originality

User poll

29% 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 35% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Historians 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

Fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Historians' job openings is expected to rise 5.7% 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 'Historians' was 72.890 $, or 35 $ per hour

'Historians' were paid 51.7% higher than the national median wage, which stood at 48.060 $

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Significantly lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2023 there were 3,040 people employed as 'Historians' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 49 thousand people are employed as 'Historians'.

Job description

Research, analyze, record, and interpret the past as recorded in sources, such as government and institutional records, newspapers and other periodicals, photographs, interviews, films, electronic media, and unpublished manuscripts, such as personal diaries and letters.

SOC Code: 19-3093.00

Comments (12)

Leave a comment
Patrick (No chance)
01 Jun 2025 13:13
Without SERIOUS improvements in:
AI Reasoning
AI language comprehension and understanding of nuance and the secondary meanings of texts, items, and pictures.
OCR text recognition
Serious digitisation efforts that are neither cost efficient, sustainable, or practical for archival sources.

AI will not be able to perform the archival research needed to create new, innovative histories. Therefore, historians will remain completely safe from AI takeover.
. (Low)
08 Jul 2024 11:18
A lot of research into different parts of history involved using interpretations and sources of either other historians or people from the time. How these pieces of history are interpreted by historians is entirely subjective to who is studying them. Robots and humans have different skills and robots are likely to pick up less small details that humans with a lot of experience in researching and studying sources and artifacts might find.
Oppressed Humanities Grad Student
03 Sep 2023 20:49
I'm a terminal PhD student and I hate this job. I hope we get replaced by the machines in near future, including my advisor. A robot would treat his PhD students better.
Jonathan Fletcher
27 Apr 2021 14:53
History is best taught through human because if it was a bot there would be a lot of errors lets say you miss type a letter or something the bot would fail while a human can correct. History is something that should be taught by thing its about Humans.
Faisal Ali Al Zahrani
26 Feb 2021 13:38
Alright now, my first question will be Historians and the philosophy of Historians, Historian go out travel the world robot will pause "error" historians go out like archaeologists dig find travel or maybe work in museums. Yet I can't see a human like machine do this task, and how will it even be able to do this task not just the information but the work the Job like going out to the field digging mapping, "archaeological discoveries" this is how historians are paid for doing field work not just inquiring content knowledge. So historians especially archaeologists will remain safe for work. If Robotics and A.I can inquire the content knowledge that's "absolutely fine" BUT! are they able to go out in the field and execute field work? NO they can't. So it's not only the content knowledge of a subject matter but the ability to understand and attempt field work, including standing up research based work, discovering, and even other stuff that all includes these types abilities.
Kate the Tet (Low)
22 Dec 2020 09:49
History will be too complicated for robots, as for me. Because this science include psychology, sociology, politics that can't be understanding for machines. Besides, history is not math.
Nilay Kanakia (No chance)
29 Aug 2020 10:29
This job is highly subjective
William (No chance)
12 May 2020 00:58
Though history, like any academic subject, can hypothetically be taught by software, unlike math it requires a human element. You can teach students the information, but you can't make them care or help them draw connections. You can't guide them down a pathway of critical thinking, at least not consistently, with learning software. Not only that, but also it is highly unlikely, unless true artificial intelligence is possible, that robots can synthesize new information and form different opinions on the subject matter. They can't account for bias without a level of input unless they're truly independently intelligent and capable of truly learning.
rachel
25 Jan 2021 19:13
very very true. Robots won't be able to understand the human chaos, mistakes, and beauty of history
Aidan (No chance)
13 Apr 2020 17:36
Historical texts and sources, as well as events, require human minds to interpret - an AI would be unable to analyze the nuances of human history
Hunchopreneur
02 Dec 2020 20:26
I don't think so really. Check out OpenAi's GPT 3. I think if the rural network is fed with more neuro links and data it will do well than humans. I watched a video where it had a conversation wherein it, the AI assumed itself to be Albert Einstein and the discussion was pretty astonishing. AI is minimized by a lot of people, it's powers are more than what we can ever imagine
Sarah (Highly likely)
01 Jul 2019 21:13
Soon, the way to learn history would have to be from a computer.
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