EXPOSED
The informational half of this job — degree-audit checks, transcript and credit-transfer review, course scheduling, scholarship and job-lead lookup, resume critiques, generic 'what careers match my interests' guidance — is exactly what chatbots and degree-planning software now do at scale, and community colleges and universities are already routing that volume to self-service. What survives is the in-person, high-stakes half: sitting with a 16-year-old disclosing abuse, running suicide risk screens and mandated reporting, IEP and 504 meetings with parents and special-ed staff, and persuading a wavering first-generation student not to drop out. Public-school counselors hold state certification, which keeps a credentialed human in the building; academic advisors at colleges hold no license and are the more exposed tier of this title.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $57,040 → $64,330 -9.8% 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
+3.5% 376,300 → 389,600 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +3.5% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 58/100 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.
~31,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
AdvisorClinicianCounselorJob CoachCareer CoachCase ManagerResume WriterCareer AdvisorDrug CounselorElder CounselorGrief CounselorGroup CounselorStudent AdvisorAcademic AdvisorBehavior AnalystCareer CounselorCareer DeveloperEmployment CoachGuidance AdvisorSchool CounselorCareer ConsultantCollege CounselorLife Skills CoachStudent Counselor
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: embodiment .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Half your calendar — degree audits, prerequisite checks, transfer-credit equivalencies, FAFSA walkthroughs, interest-inventory debriefs, resume line edits — is already handled by Slate, Navigate, and a chatbot at scale, while the other half (a Section 504 meeting where the parent is threatening to sue, a suicide-risk screen at 2pm on a Friday, talking a student out of withdrawing) needs a person in the room reading affect, which is why this lands at 11 and not 5.
Some physical or field component You are physically stationed in a building — classroom guidance lessons, hallway and cafeteria crisis response, walking a student to the nurse or the SRO, sitting at the IEP table — but nothing in the job requires manipulating equipment or working outdoors, so it scores 9 rather than the 15 of a home-visiting caseworker.
Certification preferred, not legally required This title is two tiers stapled together: K-12 counselors hold a state school-counselor certificate, are mandated reporters under state child-abuse statutes, and can lose that credential for a failed disclosure, while college academic advisors typically need only a bachelor's degree and no license at all — the 10 is the average of a real credential and none.
Meaningful discretion You decide alone whether a vague statement clears the threshold for a CPS report, whether a student is safe to go home, whether to override a teacher's placement recommendation, and whether to write the recommendation letter that decides an admission — real ownership of ambiguous calls, held at 13 rather than 17 because a principal, school psychologist, or IEP team signs off on the most consequential ones.
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 (11/20 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 (10/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (15/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) 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 38 of this occupation's 58 points (66%).
Embodiment (9/20) 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.
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 78/100 — SAFE.
Genuine two-tier structure: as degree audits, transfer-credit checks, scheduling, and interest-inventory outputs are absorbed by self-service systems, the residual caseload is crisis response, mandated reporting, IEP/504 negotiation with parents and special-ed staff, and retention intervention with wavering students — none of which is a text task. Watch for district job postings that drop scheduling duties entirely and reclassify the role as student-support/crisis
State education codes requiring that suicide-risk screening, re-entry plans after hospitalization, and 504/IEP-related counseling recommendations be conducted and signed by a state-certified school counselor (not an aide, not software) — the pattern in existing statutes like Illinois' Ann Marie's Law and California AB 2246 suicide-prevention policy mandates, extended to name a credentialed signer and record it in the student file
Statutory minimum counselor-to-student ratios that count only certified counselors and explicitly bar substituting AI/self-service advising toward the ratio — several states (e.g. NY, TX, WA) have moved ratio bills; a bar on software substitution is the specific clause to watch
Mandated-reporter liability expanded so failure-to-report exposure attaches personally to the counselor who conducted an AI-assisted screen, plus district policy naming the counselor as the decision-owner when a chatbot triage tool flags or fails to flag a disclosure — insurers writing educator professional-liability policies adding this as a condition is the checkable signal
Post-incident litigation and parental backlash against AI advising in schools producing district procurement rules or state guidance that student mental-health and crisis contact must be human — comparable to the wave of restrictions on AI counseling chatbots (Illinois' 2025 ban on AI therapy without licensed oversight); if extended to K-12 counseling functions, the human becomes the purchased good
State licensure/registration created for academic advisors at public postsecondary institutions, or a Title IV rule requiring a named human of record for satisfactory-academic-progress and financial-aid appeal determinations. Nothing of this kind is currently in motion; this is the weakest of the routes named here
The limit. The two halves of this title do not move together. Certified K-12 school counselors have real routes upward through mandated-reporter liability, ratio statutes, and crisis-signature rules. College academic advisors have almost none: no license exists, no professional body issues a practice monopoly, and institutions are the buyer rather than the student, so no trust premium accrues to the individual advisor. Any lever above that depends on certification simply does not reach that tier, and the informational-tier displacement is already underway there.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 19,890 | $77,580 +21% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 17,110 | $79,000 +23% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 9,790 | $64,730 +1% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 8,170 | $80,760 +26% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 7,980 | $76,380 +19% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 7,260 | $77,420 +20% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 7,050 | $66,190 +3% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 6,550 | $67,730 +5% |
| El Centro, CA | 200 | $141,760 +120% |
| Grand Island, NE | 90 | $109,480 +70% |
| Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 150 | $102,650 +60% |
University of Texas at Arlington
The University of Texas at Arlington announced it has launched an AI tool to support student care and advising services.
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