Political Scientists

Minimal Risk
Low High

Explore safer careers (1)

Lower estimated automation risk

Labor Relations Specialists
12% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Higher growth More jobs
6.3 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Uses policy interpretation, negotiation context, institutions, documentation, stakeholder positions, and dispute analysis.

Alternative careers

Related career paths that build on similar skills and experience

Economists
19% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Higher growth More jobs
View career
Why it fits

Applies quantitative policy analysis, public data, institutional context, modeling, reports, and evidence-based recommendations.

Sociologists
18% automation risk | Minimal Risk
Higher growth
Similar risk View career
Why it fits

Uses social systems research, survey data, institutional analysis, interviews, statistical findings, and academic writing.

Intelligence Analysts
23% automation risk | Low Risk
Higher growth More jobs
View career
Why it fits

Uses government knowledge, source evaluation, geopolitical analysis, briefing writing, risk assessment, and sensitive information handling.


Share your results with friends and family.

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
6.3/10
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.

Risk & user votes

Calculated automation risk

18% (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.
Jobs that also use this strength

Critical thinking

Very important
Why this matters
Weigh options using logic and evidence, spot weaknesses in arguments, and choose the best approach when there isn’t a single clear answer.
Jobs that also use this strength

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.
Jobs that also use this strength

Education and training expertise

Very important
Why this matters
Designing and delivering instruction—adapting lessons to different learners and measuring whether training actually works.
Jobs that also use this strength

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.
Jobs that also use this strength
Show 2 more strengths

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.
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

What users think

Based on 425 votes

22% 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 18% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Political Scientists 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 Political Scientists was $139,380 ($67 per hour).

The median annual wage for Political Scientists was 181.6% 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

Very slow growth relative to other professions.

The number of 'Political Scientists' job openings is expected to decline 3.1% 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

Significantly lower range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 5,950 people employed as 'Political Scientists' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 25 thousand people are employed as 'Political Scientists'.

People also viewed

Lawyers Computer Programmers Actors Accountants and Auditors Graphic Designers

What people are saying (10)

Leave a comment
Daniel xavier (No chance)
05 Mar 2024 21:23
Political science is not an exact science. there are thousands of variations that even with a lot of data a MACHINE, which is basically made of zeros and ones, would not be able to understand, including, for us to understand politics we need a perspective of the world that is not necessarily being glimpsed on the internet, because, after all, there are biases that the lens of social media makes us have, we basically become much more prone to fights on the internet than in real life, and, as far as we know, robots are only powered through the internet and data scientific.

and even in terms of scientific data, they cannot be used in their entirety to create a portrait of current politics, as there are ideas that only current affairs can provide. such as the change in mass media that stopped being through TV, radio and newspapers and moved completely, or partially, to the internet, another of these changes is the undeniable access to social networks. These changes are so important that they have changed the current political scenario in a significant way, but as I said previously, they do not demonstrate the totality of human relations, an issue that also has significant changes such as, for example, the rise of Fenism, the increase in the rights of populations to deny and native peoples, segregation and emancipation of gender choices and sexual options, these changes that are very important and significant for humanity in general, were somewhat forced into the algorithm internally, something that, recently in the few weeks before the publication on March 5, 2023 of this comment caused problems in images that contained falsifications and delusions of reality, such as an image that contained two women, including one black, in the American legislature in the 19th century, a time when not even women Not even black people participated directly in the US political system, that is, they did not vote and could not be voted for any political position.

in short, for a robot to be a political scientist, it would need to be within the bonds of social reality, that is, to be, living in the real world, to be outside the binary system, something that is literally impossible even with a quantum computer as it would return to the binary system because this is the universal basis of computing, not just being made up of databases and having a perspective created by your life experiences and never in any way trying to have an answer for everything, as this can generate machine delusions. That's not human-centrism on my part, it's just an observation of reality. Furthermore, it is worth adding that a being cannot create a being more intelligent than itself, it is a basic mathematical concept, that is, it is not the AI ​​that will become more intelligent than humans, it is the human being that will become more stupid every day.
Francisco (No chance)
04 May 2023 10:15
Politics are fundamentally human and unpredictable, it's not going to be dealt with or solved by mathematics or any computer program.
Galo (Highly likely)
15 Mar 2023 20:20
OpenAI has managed to now beat the lawyer bar exam with high precision, this improvement took place in the span of less than a year, with these changes, in a few years political theory could easily be replaced by AI based on gathered data of all political theory.
Milan (Low)
26 Apr 2024 01:40
A lawyer is a pretty different job compared to a political scientist though. The big distinction is that lawyers make arguments based on laws and prior court cases. There is some novel and creative thinking in formation of arguments, but they are bound by the law. Politics is a much more human and sociologically based branch. Local politics can also be quite grassroots and not suitable for AI attempting to gather data or understand human responses.
Waka Waka (Low)
20 Apr 2021 13:39
I hate artificial intelligence.
Morpheus
05 Jul 2019 15:17
If robots ever become aware enough to become politicians, you will likely see robot governments form and pretty quickly you basically have the story of The Animatrix, humans will just be enslaved after a long war and put into machines that will simulate the world.
Juan
01 Oct 2021 18:24
A politician is not the same as a political scientist...
Anonymous (No chance)
08 Apr 2019 19:37
Political science is a concept that can only be interpreted and actually developed upon by human minds. Robots will not be able to perceive politics on such a scale that entire parliaments will be replaced or assisted by them, as robots tend to overlook major factors.
GPT3
15 Jan 2023 22:35
Transhumanism is becoming a reality every day, and robots are being trained to recognize complex patterns even better than humans.

Political information can be overwhelming, but advanced algorithms have the ability to process it faster and more accurately than any human.

There is no reason why we cannot replace or assist entire parliaments with robots and artificial intelligence, if we wish.
Darius Rashidi
02 Apr 2019 15:20
You really can't use technology to replicate the mix of eerie neuroticism and ambiguous, vain narcissism required to make a true political scientist.

Leave a reply about this occupation
0/8000

Job description

Study the origin, development, and operation of political systems. May study topics, such as public opinion, political decisionmaking, and ideology. May analyze the structure and operation of governments, as well as various political entities. May conduct public opinion surveys, analyze election results, or analyze public documents.

O*NET-SOC code: 19-3094.00