Telephone Operators

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

Explore safer careers (5)

Lower estimated automation risk

Public Safety Telecommunicators
37% automation risk | Low Risk
Pays better Higher growth
51.8 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Transfers clear questioning, emergency call exposure, location lookup, calm voice control, dispatch records, and procedures.

Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan
52% automation risk | Moderate Risk
Pays better Higher growth
36.8 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Applies scripted questioning, accurate entries, caller rapport, verification, confidentiality, and patience with varied respondents.

Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance
58% automation risk | Moderate Risk
Pays better Higher growth
30.8 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Applies phone and radio communication, routing, schedules, incident notes, service coordination, and calm prioritization.

Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
59% automation risk | Moderate Risk
Pays better Higher growth
29.9 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Transfers calls, messages, scheduling, records, office software, customer routing, forms, and deadline support.

Customer Service Representatives
71% automation risk | High Risk
Higher growth More jobs
18.6 pts lower View career
Why it fits

Uses caller assistance, problem explanation, account details, refunds or billing questions, documentation, and service recovery.

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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
0.7/10
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

89% (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.

Working directly with the public

Very important
Why this matters
The job involves face-to-face interaction with customers, clients, or guests—answering questions, handling requests, and managing service situations in real time. Roles with frequent public interaction are harder to replace end-to-end because they rely on trust, communication, and adapting to unpredictable human needs.
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

What users think

Based on 137 votes

86% 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 89% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Telephone Operators 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 Telephone Operators was $39,130 ($19 per hour).

The median annual wage for Telephone Operators was 20.9% 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 'Telephone Operators' job openings is expected to decline 27.5% 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 3,950 people employed as 'Telephone Operators' within the United States.

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

Put another way, around 1 in 39 thousand people are employed as 'Telephone Operators'.

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What people are saying (7)

Leave a comment
Mr. Kruthoff (Highly likely)
27 Feb 2025 15:29
AI is getting so common due to things like DeepFakes and AI voice is very common.
Amm Do (Highly likely)
02 Jun 2023 00:20
Chat bots will soon be able to resolve complex tasks on the phone and have complex conversations with customers. The job will change significantly to s manager only role or will end entire.
Alvin(Data Scientist) (Highly likely)
11 Oct 2021 07:18
Already has been. Companies are just having to ween the tech in slowly so it doesn’t disrupt too many people's lives. But the average data scientist is able to whip up something useable for most customer service calling situations.
Harrison McDonald (Highly likely)
14 Aug 2021 21:03
Already pretty much happened
manu martinez (Highly likely)
12 Aug 2020 04:06
because technology is evolving to rapid that is taking the world by storm in everything
Sarah (Highly likely)
25 Jun 2019 23:12
Telephone operator as an occupation will soon be gone because that job has been declining so quickly we can not imagine.
seojin (Highly likely)
03 Jun 2019 10:10
no creativity, no collaboration, no critical thinking, repeatition and uncomplicated. that's why.
Leave a reply about this occupation
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Job description

Provide information by accessing alphabetical, geographical, or other directories. Assist customers with special billing requests, such as charges to a third party and credits or refunds for incorrectly dialed numbers or bad connections. May handle emergency calls and assist children or people with physical disabilities to make telephone calls.

O*NET-SOC code: 43-2021.00