EXPOSED
The core job is being a responsible adult body in a room with 25 minors: taking attendance, keeping order, walking students to the nurse, following a lesson plan someone else wrote. None of that is text-on-a-screen work, and no robot supervises a middle-school hallway, so AI barely touches the day. The exposure is different in kind — the plan-writing and worksheet-generating layer is already AI'd, most states require only a permit rather than a full license, and districts can substitute cheaper coverage models (larger combined rooms, paraprofessional pooling, asynchronous district-provided video lessons) that compress how many sub-days exist.
Nearly all of this fall was the 2020 shock. It has been climbing back since.
Median pay $28,790 → $41,670 +15.8% 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
+1.6% 510,100 → 518,500 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +1.6% 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.
~61,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Sub (Substitute)Sub Aide (Substitute Aide)Sub Teacher (Substitute Teacher)Building Sub (Building Substitute)Sub Educator (Substitute Educator)Sub TA (Substitute Teacher Assistant)Sub Instructor (Substitute Instructor)Sub Para (Substitute Paraprofessional)Sub TA (Substitute Teaching Assistant)K-12 Substitute Teacher (K-12 Sub Teacher)School Sub Teacher (School Substitute Teacher)HS Sub Teacher (High School Substitute Teacher)English Sub Teacher (English Substitute Teacher)ESL Sub (English as a Second Language Substitute)Building Sub Teacher (Building Substitute Teacher)Certified Sub Teacher (Certified Substitute Teacher)Classroom Sub Teacher (Classroom Substitute Teacher)Substitute Preschool Teacher (Sub Preschool Teacher)Elementary Sub Teacher (Elementary Substitute Teacher)Pre-School Sub Teacher (Pre-School Substitute Teacher)Short-Term Sub Teacher (Short-Term Substitute Teacher)Sub Enrichment Teacher (Substitute Enrichment Teacher)Sub Vocational Instructor (Substitute Vocational Instructor)K-12 Sub Teacher (Kindergarten to 12th Grade Substitute Teacher)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: judgment & accountability .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Delivering someone else's lesson to a room of 25 seventh-graders, breaking up a shoving match, and getting signatures on a fire-drill roster are tasks no model performs; the 14 rather than 18 reflects that the paper layer of the day — worksheet generation, sub notes, fill-in busywork, grading the packet you handed out — is already being produced by AI before you walk in.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are physically in the building for the full bell schedule: hallway and cafeteria duty, walking a nosebleed to the health office, standing between two kids, unlocking a classroom in a school you've never entered — 16 not 20 only because it's a controlled indoor site rather than a rooftop or a rig floor.
Certification preferred, not legally required Most states issue substitutes an emergency permit or 30-day authorization on a bachelor's degree or fewer credits, not a teaching license, and the principal or teacher of record owns instructional accountability — the 7 comes from the fingerprint/background clearance and mandatory-reporter duty under state child-abuse statutes, which are real personal obligations you cannot delegate.
Meaningful discretion You mostly execute a plan left on the desk and follow the district discipline flowchart, but you decide alone whether a student leaves the room, whether behavior gets written up, and whether something a kid says triggers a report — genuine calls, made without knowing the child's history, which is what keeps it at 7 rather than in the low teens.
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 (14/20 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 (7/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (9/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (7/20) 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 23 of this occupation's 53 points (43%).
Embodiment (16/20) 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 69/100 — SAFE.
Formal designation of the covering adult as the accountable party for mandated child-abuse reporting, Title IX incident reporting, IEP/504 accommodation delivery, and physical-restraint/seclusion decisions during the period they hold the room — with documented training (de-escalation, restraint certification) and named liability, as is already spreading through state restraint-and-seclusion statutes and post-incident litigation. This makes the substitute an owner of consequential ambiguous calls rather than a warm body following a plan.
Task-mix shift: if district-provided AI lesson delivery becomes the norm, the residual day is behavior management, crisis response, accommodation compliance and physical supervision — the tier machines cannot do. This raises resistance per remaining day even while shrinking the number of days, so the score can rise as headcount falls.
State education codes or fire-marshal/child-supervision rules that fix a hard adult-to-student supervision ratio per physical room and forbid counting a streamed teacher or a pooled para toward it — i.e. the 'combined room' workaround becomes illegal rather than merely unpopular. Several states already set ratios for early grades and for special-education classrooms; extending an explicit per-room credentialed-adult requirement to grades 6-12 would convert sub-days from a budget line into a compliance line. Also watch district insurance carriers requiring a permitted, background-cleared, restraint-trained adult present for coverage of student-injury claims.
Collectively bargained language banning class combination and asynchronous video coverage as substitutes for an in-room adult — CTU, UTLA and several state affiliates have pushed exactly this since 2021 remote-coverage fights. A ratified contract clause requiring a live substitute for any absence over a set length, or a state law barring uncertified-adult 'study hall' coverage, converts the sub from an optional cost into a required purchase.
The limit. The dimension scores can rise while the occupation still shrinks: the binding threat here is coverage-model substitution and total sub-days demanded, not AI performing the tasks. A higher liability shield protects the role's definition, not its volume.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 35,740 | $57,210 +37% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 26,760 | $45,220 +9% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 15,430 | $60,780 +46% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 15,060 | $46,470 +12% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 12,070 | $39,340 -6% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 11,210 | $45,680 +10% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 11,110 | $43,460 +4% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 10,570 | $60,790 +46% |
| Anchorage, AK | 330 | $78,840 +89% |
| Napa, CA | 300 | $76,520 +84% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 3,800 | $72,330 +74% |
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.