{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/economists/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Economists", "soc_code": "19-3011", "category": "Science", "us_employment": 17790, "median_annual_wage": 124720 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 35, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 8, "embodiment": 1, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 10, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Pulling BLS/Census/Compustat series, coding a fixed-effects or VAR specification in Stata/R, drafting the literature review and the CPI-outlook memo are now first-draftable by machine, and an 8 rather than a 4 reflects that the identification step — arguing why your instrument is exogenous, why the pre-trends hold, why the 2020 structural break invalidates the pre-pandemic elasticity — still has to be reasoned by a person who will be cross-examined on it.", "embodiment": "The job is a laptop, a data extract, and a seminar room; the only physical duty is standing at a whiteboard or a hearing podium, which is why this is 1 and not 0.", "liability_shield": "There is no economist license, no exam, no board that can strike you off — a 3 rather than 0 only because expert-witness work runs through Daubert admissibility and federal disclosure rules that attach your name and CV to the damages calculation.", "trust_premium": "A 10 fits the split in the occupation: the Fed regional director, the chief economist a CFO calls before a pricing decision, and the retained damages expert are hired as named individuals, while the bulk of industry and consulting economists deliver forecast tables and sector notes under an institution's masthead that clients would accept from whoever filled the seat.", "judgment_accountability": "You choose the counterfactual, set the discount rate and the horizon, decide whether to strip an outlier quarter, and defend a number that becomes a rate vote, a merger remedy, or a nine-figure damages award — high stakes with genuine ambiguity, held below 14 because the model, the data vintage, and the peer-review or committee process absorb much of the blame when the forecast misses." }, "rationale": "The daily work of a median economist — cleaning datasets, running regressions and time-series models, writing literature reviews, producing forecast memos and chart-heavy briefs — sits squarely in the zone where LLMs plus statistical tooling already produce usable first drafts. What resists is causal identification judgment: choosing the instrument, defending the counterfactual, deciding which model failure matters, and putting your name on a forecast or damages estimate that a court, a central bank committee, or a CFO will act on. There is no license, so the moat is reputation and accountability rather than regulation, and it is thinner for the many economists doing routine industry analysis than for those testifying or advising policy.", "outlook": "Headcount stays small and flat while the routine-analysis tier compresses; the economists who thrive in 2035 are the ones whose names appear on testimony, forecasts, and policy recommendations.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Expert-witness economists already own damages estimates under Daubert; if courts tighten disclosure of AI use in expert reports (e.g. the proposed FRE 707 amendment on machine-generated evidence, published for comment 2024-25), the named economist becomes the accountable signer for model choice, instrument selection and counterfactual defense, and AI-only analysis becomes inadmissible without a human author.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if data cleaning, regression running, literature review and chart-brief production are absorbed by tooling, the residual role is causal identification, model-failure triage, and defending a specification under cross-examination or before an FOMC-style committee — a task mix current models handle poorly because it requires committing to an untestable counterfactual.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Credentialing tied to signed work rather than a state license: if bank regulators extend model-risk-management rules (SR 11-7 / OCC 2011-12) to require a named qualified economist to attest to macro scenario and CECL model assumptions, or if actuarial-style attestation is imported for damages models, an identified human becomes a required signatory.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Buyers paying specifically for an attributable human name: central bank appointments, testifying-expert retention at hourly rates, and Article-level publication all price the named author's reputation. This premium is real but concentrated; if litigation-support and policy-advisory demand grows while routine industry forecasting commoditizes, the surviving segment carries it — it does not spread to the median industry analyst.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "No realistic licensure route exists for economists as a whole; the CFA/actuarial analogy does not transfer. Most gains accrue only to the testifying/policy-advisory minority — for the many economists doing routine corporate forecasting and dashboard-adjacent analysis, none of these levers apply and the score stays near where it is." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 19550, "wage": 102490 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 18650, "wage": 104340 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 19000, "wage": 105020 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 17520, "wage": 108350 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 15640, "wage": 105630 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 16370, "wage": 113940 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 16420, "wage": 115730 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 15880, "wage": 115440 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 17790, "wage": 124720 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -9, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "economics-teachers-postsecondary", "title": "Economics Teachers, Postsecondary", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 45, "median_wage": 123920, "overlap": 86, "skills_to_close": [ "Instructing", "Learning Strategies", "Operations Monitoring" ] }, { "slug": "actuaries", "title": "Actuaries", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 45, "median_wage": 130000, "overlap": 86, "skills_to_close": [ "Systems Evaluation", "Operations Monitoring", "Operations Analysis", "Systems Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "financial-managers", "title": "Financial Managers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "median_wage": 166570, "overlap": 75, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Financial Resources", "Negotiation", "Management of Personnel Resources", "Operations Monitoring" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }