EXPOSED
The paperwork half of this job — lesson plans, newsletters, curriculum outlines, event calendars, volunteer sign-up tracking, grant and budget write-ups — is already the kind of drafting AI does at usable quality. What does not transfer is standing in a room with teenagers, sitting with a grieving family, recruiting and holding volunteers who are not paid, and being the person a congregation trusts with its children's formation. There is no state license here, so the protection is relational and institutional rather than legal, and headcount tracks congregational budgets more than technology.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $43,860 → $52,100 -5.0% 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
+2.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 22,160 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 +2.1% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 53/100 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.
~13,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RectorYouth PastorYouth DirectorProgram DirectorWorship DirectorYouth InstructorChurch SupervisorYouth CoordinatorChildren's DirectorLeadership DirectorMinistries DirectorMinistries CoordinatorSenior Adults DirectorYouth Ministry DirectorCampus Ministry DirectorAdult Ministries DirectorMen's Ministries DirectorMusic Ministries DirectorYouth and Family DirectorYouth Ministries DirectorYouth Program CoordinatorCampus Ministries DirectorFamily Ministries DirectorYouth Development Director
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier The 12 reflects a genuine split: curriculum sequencing, VBS scheduling, teacher-training handouts and the weekly bulletin insert are draftable now, but running a confirmation retreat, catching the kid who stopped showing up, and negotiating with three Sunday school teachers who all want the same room are not tasks that reduce to text output.
Some physical or field component At 10 rather than 4 because the job is physically located — setting up classrooms, chaperoning lock-ins and mission trips, driving vans, hauling supplies — but it is a church building and a fellowship hall, not a roof or a construction site, which keeps it out of the 13+ band.
No licence, no signature requirement A 2 because ordination or denominational credentialing is an internal matter, not a state license — no board can revoke your right to direct a education program, and when something goes wrong the exposure runs to the congregation, the senior clergy, and the insurer, not to a personal license you hold.
Meaningful discretion A 12, not higher, because the hardest calls — a disclosure of abuse, a family in crisis, a doctrinal dispute over what gets taught — are real and yours to spot, but they escalate quickly to the pastor, the board, the denomination's safe-church policy, or mandated reporting, so you rarely own the final resolution alone.
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 (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (17/20) 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 31 of this occupation's 53 points (58%).
Embodiment (10/20) 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.
Clergy 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 64/100, still EXPOSED.
Child-protection regimes that name the education director as the accountable person for screening, training, and reporting decisions — mandatory-reporter designation plus insurer-required safeguarding sign-off. Church liability insurers (e.g. Church Mutual, GuideOne) already condition abuse coverage on named-role safeguarding compliance; tightening that to a designated director role makes the ambiguous call — whether to remove a volunteer, whether to report — formally owned.
Genuine two-tier structure: if AI absorbs newsletters, calendars, curriculum drafting, and grant write-ups, what remains is the in-room work — teaching adolescents, pastoral presence with families, volunteer recruitment and retention. Task_resistance rises as a share of a smaller remaining job, without any new law.
State-level youth-serving-organization statutes requiring a designated, background-checked, certified child protection officer per congregation, with personal duty attached (extensions of existing mandatory-reporter clergy laws in states like Texas and New York). This is the only realistic route to a legal shield here, and even then it is a named-role duty, not a practice license.
Denominational bodies adopting explicit policy that formation and catechetical content must be authored or vetted by a credentialed human — e.g. a USCCB or synod-level statement that AI-generated catechesis is not acceptable for sacramental preparation, or a Jewish movement's education commission requiring human-authored curriculum. Precedent: multiple denominations already issued statements on AI-written sermons (Southern Baptist ERLC, several Lutheran synods).
The limit. The binding constraint is not capability but congregational budgets and attendance decline; no lever here offsets shrinking membership, and headcount can fall while every dimension score rises.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,940 | $59,170 +14% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,270 | $62,390 +20% |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 1,100 | $46,110 -11% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 490 | $51,540 -1% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 480 | $59,320 +14% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 480 | $60,650 +16% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 420 | $51,070 -2% |
| Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN | 410 | $58,490 +12% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 200 | $93,120 +79% |
| San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX | 40 | $84,650 +62% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 70 | $83,480 +60% |
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 53. 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.