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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
7.8/10
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.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

9% (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.

Originality

Very important
Why this matters
Coming up with novel ideas and creative solutions when there isn’t an obvious playbook to follow.
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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 5 more strengths

Instructing

Quite important
Why this matters
Teaching or coaching others—explaining steps, giving feedback, and adapting to different learners so they can do the work safely and correctly.
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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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Operations analysis

Quite important
Why this matters
Figure out what people need and what a product must do, then translate those requirements into a workable design.
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What users think

Based on 1,201 votes

26% 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 9% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Physicists 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 Physicists was $166,290 ($80 per hour).

The median annual wage for Physicists was 235.9% 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 'Physicists' job openings is expected to rise 4.0% 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 21,340 people employed as 'Physicists' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 7 thousand people are employed as 'Physicists'.

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What people are saying (47)

Leave a comment
az09 (No chance)
06 Dec 2024 19:01
Its the last job that'll get taken over; if it does, we're not working anyways
Samik Yanque Amable (No chance)
13 Jun 2024 15:49
A pure science is a kind of art where your creativity must shine to observe problems and devise solutions. The truth is, it hurts to think that my future will be filled with the anxiety of "finding a problem" that is relevant to science, but it's the hell I chose.

If any junior reads this message, I can only wish you the best. While your work is irreplaceable by AI, your future will be filled with problems where AI cannot assist you. Good luck.
Alec
06 Jul 2024 02:21
Thank you. I am 12, and this is my dream job. Seeing this message really made me excited!
Toast (No chance)
24 Feb 2023 02:04
Being a physicist requires, at least to a certain degree, being able to come up with purely original ideas, rather than interpolating the existing body of knowledge.
Hugo klatovsky (No chance)
22 Nov 2024 03:05
I am a PhD physicist and i am not noticing any robots in my physics department
Mahadev
01 Feb 2025 17:27
Bro seriously the 2024 noble prize winner of physics Jeffry Hinton get his Nobel prize for some study about neuronal pathway and ai so why we don't get replaced or get useless but it's not so scientific evident to say it have no chance and yha if there is a massive ai take over like sci-fi movies then we are the last to lose our job in world that's sure 😊
Oliver Cavendish
23 Sep 2024 13:20
differentiating between experimental and theoretical physicists, i think that there is a chance that experimental physics will be replaced by automation in the near future especially as nuclear engineering also comes under this bracket and the militaries of major world powers such as America, China and India are looking to incorporate more cyber-warfare and robotics into their offensive (and defensive) technologies and there is also a high chance that as other fields like chemistry, for example, begin to get automated, experimental physics will too. but theoretical physics, on the other hand, is the purest discipline of science there is. it requires originality, innovation, creativity, fun, a genuine interest in science and physics for its own sake and the ability to make coherent theories and hypotheses based on observations and data gathered of and from natural phenomena. this, at least in the near future, is something that AI is thoroughly incapable of doing. so on the whole, no, theo.physicists' shouldn't be going anywhere; exp.physicists on the other hand..............unless, of course, elon surprises us again with a sentient AI that can actually take over everything and become the next SkyNet!
Brian (No Chance)
25 Oct 2022 17:51
Many other experimental physicists and I already automate every measurement we can, but there is still plenty of work to do.
Saket (Low)
02 Jul 2024 04:55
I think that robots will not be able to find new things as of right now they can only use a database and find things out of there a robot doesnt have enough creativity to look out into space for example and think"Hmm why is it moving" for something htat shouldnt move it is just gonna see it and be like"cool"
Wesley I (No chance)
30 Aug 2021 13:48
I believe that it will be possible but not for a very long time, the process of positing new questions and then solving them is rather complex and I'm guessing that it will be at least 100 years before the jobs of theoretical physicists start to become threatened.
Rowan (Uncertain)
23 Mar 2021 15:36
The development of AI is rapidly improving, AI maybe 10 years in the future being able to predict or understand the universe better through random generation or pure knowledge is very probable. However I doubt they will replace Physicists in the near decade it should be very increasingly possible.
1234 (Low)
27 Apr 2026 12:34
Quite a niche field that requires a lot of originality with really high level math in many cases.
Anonymous (No chance)
26 Apr 2026 18:15
An ai can’t find anything new, it just bases off of information that we already have however physicists are constantly discovering new things
E (No chance)
27 Sep 2024 12:28
Physics requires complex models and creativity that artificial intelligence can not replicate without a human mind.
Zuzia (Moderate)
07 Jun 2023 14:40
AI can already teach itself new things and it escalates very quickly, it probably will be able to analyze all the knowledge we have on Earth and come to some important conclusions.
Samuel (No chance)
25 May 2023 21:40
It requires thinking outside the box, solving new problems, writing new programs. It has already implemented computers for calculations.
Mahadev
01 Feb 2025 17:32
We humans don't have super power some extra nurons get free that we use to creative thinking but if it attain consciousness like humans then understanding of physics to ai is like a small kid with ultimate curiosity and knowledge so yha then only we want to get feared or then is it because a Laplace demon 😈 ha nice to think so all that possibility and also there is 1% chance for everything in
Quarked_Out (Low)
02 Feb 2023 00:42
Hmm, a lot of areas in physics do incorporate ML techniques and AI to some degree. However, people with physics training play an undisputedly dominant role in research.

If anything, I can see some simulation aspects or redundant experimental procedures being automated in the near term. But parts that incorporate creative problem solving or the physical intuition needed in determining directions to take research are things that are pretty safeguarded to humans for a bit.

I think those "intuitions" are very difficult to map to general problem-solving algorithms.
David (No chance)
29 May 2022 05:30
I wonder what all those people were thinking when they said there was a realistic possibility that physicists will be obsolete in 20 years. That's absurd on its face and every physicist I have ever met would agree.

We can have a discussion on whether it is possible in the next 200 years, sure, but 20 years? That's laughable. Given that only physicists are qualified to write, train, and optimize the algorithms that would be used to replace them, it will take a long, long, long time.

I suspect that we would need true machine sentience before we could actually start to talk about replacing theoretical and mathematical physicists.
Bimsara Bodaragama (No chance)
29 Mar 2022 18:37
It's more about intuition and innovativeness. Of course, we will use more tools, but with Physics, since we interpret as we observe (there is a little problem with that conclusion, though), AI may not be able to take it over.
Pinaki Patra
08 Feb 2021 19:08
A huge section of theoretical physicists do algorithm based research, which can easily be replaced by automation. However, Philosophy based theoretical research is difficult to be replaced.
Physics Boi (Low)
06 Jan 2021 08:16
Doubt it, anyway we need physicists to understand what the AI is discovering anyway
Anonymous (No chance)
28 Dec 2020 13:45
It is scientifically proven that the human brain is MUCH more complicated than any AI, and it is very hard for AI to ask a question and solve it on their own, so I think AI stands no chance on taking over the complex job of science.

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Job description

Conduct research into physical phenomena, develop theories on the basis of observation and experiments, and devise methods to apply physical laws and theories.

O*NET-SOC code: 19-2012.00