Telemarketers

Highest risk Lowest scored Low pay & highrisk
Imminent Risk
Low High

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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
0.9/10
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

82% (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.

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.
Jobs that also use this strength

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

Assisting and caring for others

Quite important
Why this matters
Provide hands-on help, emotional support, or personal care to people—work that depends on empathy, trust, and responding to individual needs in the moment.
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.
Jobs that also use this strength

Thinking creatively

Quite 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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Show 2 more strengths

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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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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What users think

Based on 402 votes

91% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted that it's very probable this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 82% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Telemarketers 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 low paid relative to other professions

In 2024, the median annual wage for Telemarketers was $34,410 ($17 per hour).

The median annual wage for Telemarketers was 30.5% 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

Very slow growth relative to other professions.

The number of 'Telemarketers' job openings is expected to decline 22.1% 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

Moderate range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2024 there were 66,430 people employed as 'Telemarketers' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 2 thousand people are employed as 'Telemarketers'.

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What people are saying (8)

Leave a comment
Carla Stewart (Highly likely)
03 Sep 2024 15:50
Because companies are becoming less personable and don't actually care about potential customers nor do the value having paid employees for said potential customers to speak with and have any sense of personality. They have a bottom line and that's becoming all that matters. People are starting to only be measured by what they spend and human employees are ultimately disposable.
Doda
13 Apr 2026 13:06
I'd rather have an AI field most of my questions rather than a person with an accent so thick i can't understand them, and in US based call centers, some folks were incredibly uninformed, to the point I had to call back to speak to another random person in hopes they might actually know what they're talking about.
Jet (Highly likely)
06 Mar 2020 23:19
Google will probably be the first one, and they desperately need it. It is almost impossible to reach someone at Google support, think about how many people they would need to hire. Billions of people use their services literally everyday. https://cloud.google.com/solutions/contact-center
xavier (Highly likely)
20 Aug 2019 01:40
its already happened
sarah heckins
21 Jan 2020 09:55
omg I know
Reuben Black
21 Jan 2020 09:55
Telemarketing should be a thing done by people now because I wouldn't mind doing it when I'm older and looking for jobs because I'm good with computers so you know if u have any offers ring me in about ten years 0792656XXXX......
juuuh (Moderate)
09 Aug 2019 09:16
I feel like its already happening, receiving annoying robo calls isn't unusual these days. 20 years is a long time - telemarketing needs to evolve (no idea how) or it will be gone.
F.Chatman (Moderate)
22 Feb 2023 16:09
If employees continue thinking working from home is productive and the employer management staff is to afraid to demand the employees come back to work. This give upper management opportunity to do a test run on automation. This is a win for the Tech field and a loss for those peoples that think they are slick by using this to work two jobs.
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Job description

Solicit donations or orders for goods or services over the telephone.

O*NET-SOC code: 41-9041.00