EXPOSED
Lecture content, problem sets, exam writing, and even first-pass grading of stoichiometry and mechanism questions are the kind of structured text work AI already does at usable quality, and open courseware plus tutoring bots erode the value of the standard general-chemistry lecture. What does not transfer is the wet lab: supervising students handling reagents, enforcing hazard protocol, diagnosing why a titration or synthesis failed, and running a research group. The modal worker here is heavily weighted toward large intro-course teaching and adjunct or non-tenure appointments, where enrollment economics — not AI capability — is the nearer threat.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $79,550 → $93,250 -6.2% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+2.2%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 19,980 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +2.2% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 54/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~1,900 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
LecturerProfessorInstructorChemical EducatorCollege ProfessorAdjunct InstructorAssistant ProfessorAssociate ProfessorChemistry ProfessorChemistry InstructorPharmacognosy TeacherBiochemistry ProfessorCollege Faculty MemberChemistry Faculty MemberChemistry Lab InstructorPhytochemistry ProfessorOrganic Chemistry TeacherUniversity Faculty MemberPhysical Chemistry TeacherAdjunct Chemistry ProfessorChemistry Adjunct ProfessorInorganic Chemistry TeacherOrganic Chemistry ProfessorAdjunct Chemistry Instructor
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Writing the general-chemistry syllabus, generating stoichiometry and equilibrium problem sets with worked solutions, and marking multiple-choice or numeric-answer exams are already handled at usable quality by current tools, which caps this below the mixed range's midpoint; what pulls it up to 12 rather than 6 is the unscriptable half of the job — standing at a fume hood judging whether a student's setup is about to boil over, and reading a failed IR spectrum with the student to find where they went wrong.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments A 13 reflects that the teaching lab is a genuinely uncontrolled environment — open flames, concentrated acids, unpredictable undergraduates — and the instructor is physically present enforcing goggles, waste segregation, and fume-hood use, not just certifying that a procedure exists on paper; it stops at 13 rather than 18 because the lecture, office hours, and grading portion of the load is entirely screen-and-chalkboard work.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no state license to teach chemistry at a college — a PhD and a departmental appointment are the whole gate — so despite bearing real OSHA lab-safety and chemical-hygiene-plan duties, nothing personally attaches to you the way a PE stamp or medical license does, and the institution absorbs the exposure; the 3 rather than 0 is that hazardous-materials responsibility, which is delegated to you by name in most chemical hygiene plans.
Meaningful discretion Deciding whether a student's inconsistent yields are sloppy technique or a contaminated reagent lot, setting the curve on a failing exam, and calling whether an unfamiliar reaction is safe to let sophomores run are real discretionary calls, but they sit at 12 rather than 16 because course learning outcomes, ACS-aligned curricula, accreditation requirements, and departmental grade norms already define the boundaries you are choosing within.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (12/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (14/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (12/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 29 of this occupation's 54 points (54%).
Embodiment (13/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
Physician Assistants SAFE
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 69/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: if lecture delivery and first-pass grading of stoichiometry are absorbed by courseware, what remains is lab instruction, oral/practical assessment, and diagnosing failed procedures. Visible driver is the shift to in-person proctored and oral exams because take-home problem sets are no longer assessable — several chemistry departments have already moved general-chemistry assessment back to invigilated paper and practical exams.
Formalizing the instructor as the named decision-maker in two ambiguous, consequential calls: academic-integrity determinations under AI-detection uncertainty (where faculty senates are writing policy requiring a human instructor, not a detector score, to make the finding), and lab hazard/stop-work authority under the chemical hygiene plan. Both make a specific person own a call that cannot be delegated to software.
Institutional and insurer requirements that undergraduate wet-lab sections have a credentialed instructor physically present at a fixed student ratio — e.g. ACS Committee on Professional Training approval criteria and campus EH&S/OSHA lab standard (29 CFR 1910.1450) chemical hygiene plans naming a responsible person — plus accreditation refusal to count remote/simulated labs toward degree lab hours. If ACS guidelines explicitly cap virtual-lab substitution, the lab-supervision core becomes non-substitutable and the job re-weights toward it.
Lab-safety liability naming the supervising instructor personally — the trajectory after the UCLA Sangji case, where a PI faced felony charges under Cal/OSHA, and subsequent campus rules assigning documented training-and-supervision duties to a named instructor of record for each lab section. This is a genuine but narrow shield: it covers lab sections, not lecture-only or online teaching, so it cannot lift the whole occupation.
Employers and professional schools treating an ACS-certified degree, or letters of recommendation from a known faculty member with a research relationship, as a filter that AI-completed credentials cannot satisfy — i.e. the premium attaches to human vouching and bench mentorship rather than to lectures. Route is narrow and mostly benefits research-active faculty, not the modal adjunct teaching large intro sections.
The limit. Every lever here protects the wet-lab and research-mentorship tier, which is exactly the tier the modal worker in this SOC — adjunct or non-tenure-track, teaching large intro lecture sections — is least attached to. Enrollment economics and the adjunct labor market cap the realistic ceiling around the mid-60s: no rule requiring a licensed human to sign chemistry instruction exists or is being drafted, and none of these mechanisms creates tenure-line headcount.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,580 | $99,980 +7% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 620 | $100,560 +8% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 560 | $141,370 +52% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 530 | $123,250 +32% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 500 | $99,230 +6% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 360 | $99,650 +7% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 340 | $83,150 -11% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 310 | $98,170 +5% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 110 | $156,430 +68% |
| Wilmington, NC | 40 | $144,160 +55% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 560 | $141,370 +52% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 54. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.