0
72/100 career outlook
Mixed picture. AI will change how you work, but the role itself is growing. Lean into the parts only you can do.
0% ai exposure+2.1% job growth
job growth
+2.1%
2024–2034
employed (2024)
15,800
people
annual openings
1,200
per year
ai exposure
0.0%
Anthropic index
how you compare
career outlook vs similar roles
1/2
the full picture
Your role sits in solid territory. AI will handle routine grading and can speed up literature reviews, but these aren't the core of what you do. The real work—writing grant proposals, delivering lectures on macroeconomics or price theory, designing curricula, sitting on committees that shape policy—remains fundamentally human. Students need you to argue a position, challenge their thinking, and model how economists actually work.
Where you're genuinely irreplaceable is in the judgment calls. Should this student's reasoning pass even if the math is messy. What should next semester's course emphasize given shifts in the field. How do you pitch a grant to funders who care about impact, not just methodology. These involve reading the room, weighing competing goods, and knowing your institution inside out.
The modest job growth (2.1%) reflects structural realities in higher education, not AI. If anything, your relative immunity to automation is an advantage in a sector that's increasingly anxious about it.
task breakdown
this is all you
8
tasks where you're irreplaceable
- Serve on academic or administrative committees that deal with institutional policies, departmental matters, and academic issues.
- Write grant proposals to procure external research funding.
- Participate in campus and community events.
- Prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as econometrics, price theory, and macroeconomics.
- Act as advisers to student organizations.
- Prepare course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts.
- Maintain student attendance records, grades, and other required records.
- Initiate, facilitate, and moderate classroom discussions.
ai speeds this up
4
tasks AI can assist with
- Advise students on academic and vocational curricula and on career issues.
- Plan, evaluate, and revise curricula, course content, course materials, and methods of instruction.
- Provide professional consulting services to government or industry.
- Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.
ai handles this
5
tasks with high AI penetration
- Evaluate and grade students' class work, assignments, and papers.
- Conduct research in a particular field of knowledge and publish findings in professional journals, books, or electronic media.
- Compile, administer, and grade examinations, or assign this work to others.
- Compile bibliographies of specialized materials for outside reading assignments.
- Participate in student recruitment, registration, and placement activities.