Proofreaders and Copy Markers

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Imminent Risk
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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
1.8/10
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

80% (Imminent Risk)

Imminent Risk (81-100%): This occupation appears highly exposed to end-to-end replacement by AI, software, robotics, or other computer-controlled systems. Roles in this range often involve predictable, repeatable, or rules-based work with limited need for human judgement, trust, creativity, or adaptation to messy real-world conditions. This does not mean every job will disappear immediately, but it is a strong signal to consider safer alternatives or start building more resilient skills.

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.

Critical thinking

Quite 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

What users think

Based on 106 votes

71% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted that it's probable this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 80% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Proofreaders and Copy Markers 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

Low paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Proofreaders and Copy Markers was $49,210 ($24 per hour).

The median annual wage for Proofreaders and Copy Markers was 0.6% lower 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 'Proofreaders and Copy Markers' job openings is expected to decline 0.6% 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 5,160 people employed as 'Proofreaders and Copy Markers' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 29 thousand people are employed as 'Proofreaders and Copy Markers'.

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What people are saying (3)

John (Low)
23 Aug 2019 17:16
AI is fine for "yes or no" corrections of text - misspelled words, grammar. But it doesn't have the sense of context, of being able to identify when a piece of text perhaps needs to be "wrong" for effect or format. Or identifying tone or whether something is libelous or off-brand/off-message. If you need evidence of how AI is imperfect when it comes to correcting text, consider how frequently auto-correct and similar predictive tools - and even spell check (which is far from 100% perfect) go wrong.
Joe Jo
06 Jul 2020 02:00
Have you heard of Grammarly?
Cain
14 Apr 2021 23:59
Hi, proofreader here. Grammarly is currently an imperfect software, but I'm confident that in the long-run language programs such as GPT-3 will improve their ability to determine context. I expect I'll first be using them in tandem to edit substandard writing before it learns enough to shove me into the UBI line.
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Job description

Read transcript or proof type setup to detect and mark for correction any grammatical, typographical, or compositional errors. Excludes workers whose primary duty is editing copy. Includes proofreaders of braille.

O*NET-SOC code: 43-9081.00