EXPOSED
The core of this job — sitting beside a struggling second-grader, de-escalating a meltdown, assisting a student with feeding, toileting, or mobility, watching a playground — is physical child supervision that no current robot or chatbot performs. What AI does erode is the paperwork edge: drafting worksheets, grading practice sets, prepping materials, logging behavior data, and one-on-one reading/math drill, where adaptive software is already deployed in classrooms. The modal worker here is a special-education paraprofessional whose real risk is district budget cuts and edtech substitution for tutoring blocks, not automation of the caregiving core; the weak spot is the near-total absence of a licensure shield (ParaPro test or associate degree, not a protected license).
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $27,920 → $36,780 +5.4% 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
-1.5% 1,422,800 → 1,401,700 on the projections basis
Shrinking, but not obviously because of AI
The BLS projects -1.5% by 2034, but at 60/100 this work is only moderately exposed — not the profile of a job current AI can simply do. Occupations shrink for many reasons, and the score does not point at automation as this one's cause.
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.
~170,400 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
GraderProctorCo-TeacherTest GraderPaper GraderParaeducatorTeacher AideGrading ClerkClassroom AideHelper TeacherPreschool AideTeacher's AideStudent TeacherTutor AssistantParaprofessionalPractice TeacherInstructional AideClassroom AssistantSchool Reading AideTeacher's AssistantAssistant InstructorKindergartner HelperEducational AssistantElementary Instructor
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Physically restraining a student mid-crisis under a district's approved restraint protocol, changing a diaper for a nonverbal 10-year-old, and shadowing a runner on the playground are the tasks that fill the day, and none of them decompose into anything a model can do — the 16 rather than 19 reflects that grading practice sets, prepping laminated materials, logging ABC behavior data, and running the scripted reading fluency drill are genuinely being handed to adaptive software.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work in hallways, cafeterias, buses, sensory rooms, and playgrounds — uncontrolled spaces with unpredictable bodies — doing lifting, transfers, hand-over-hand feeding, and physical de-escalation; it sits at 17 rather than 20 only because a meaningful slice of the week is spent seated at a table or a computer doing small-group instruction and data entry.
Certification preferred, not legally required The ParaPro Assessment or two years of college credit under ESSA is a hiring screen, not a license — no board can revoke your practice, and when an IEP goal is missed or an incident report is filed, the certified special-education teacher and the district own it, which is why this is 5 and not 0: the ESSA paraprofessional requirement is a real federal floor a district cannot simply waive.
Meaningful discretion You make live calls the IEP does not spell out — when to prompt versus wait, when a behavior plan is failing today, when to pull a student from the room — but the plan, the goals, and the consequential decisions are written by the teacher and the IEP team, so 9 reflects real in-the-moment discretion inside someone else's framework rather than ownership of the outcome.
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 (16/20 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 (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) 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 27 of this occupation's 60 points (45%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to teaching assistants, except postsecondary on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
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.
Due-process settlements and OCR findings requiring districts to prove a qualified human adult was physically present for specified minutes of 1:1 support, making software substitution for an IEP service minutes non-compliant.
Task-mix shift: if adaptive reading/math software absorbs the drill blocks and AI absorbs behavior-data logging, the residual day is de-escalation, toileting/feeding, seizure and allergy response, and physical prompting — the tier no software touches. Genuine two-tier job.
IDEA-driven change making the 1:1 paraprofessional a named, legally required service on the IEP with state-set qualification credentials — e.g. state boards moving paraprofessionals onto a credentialed 'educational aide certificate' with renewal and disciplinary authority (Texas and Ohio already issue such certificates; expansion plus IEP-mandated staffing ratios would harden it). Also state mandatory-reporter and restraint/seclusion statutes naming the aide personally.
Formal role in behavior-intervention-plan implementation and crisis response — district policy requiring the trained aide (CPI/Safety-Care certified) to make the restraint/no-restraint call and document it, with the aide's log as the legal record in due-process hearings.
Parent-side demand encoded in IEP negotiation — parents refusing edtech-only tutoring blocks and winning named human aide minutes; plus growth of privately-funded 1:1 aides and shadow aides in private/charter placements.
Little headroom; already near ceiling. Rises only marginally if medical-adjacent duties (g-tube feeding, catheterization, lift transfers) shift further onto paraprofessionals under state delegated-nursing-task rules.
The limit. The binding risk here is fiscal, not technical: ESSER cliff budget cuts and aide-to-student ratio increases displace these workers regardless of dimension scores. A licensure shield would also raise entry cost into a job that currently pays near minimum wage, so districts and unions may resist the very credentialing that would protect it.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 126,920 | $38,890 +6% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 53,010 | $46,240 +26% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 46,770 | $37,840 +3% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 26,990 | $36,080 -2% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 26,350 | $40,930 +11% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 25,270 | $31,480 -14% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 25,050 | $46,200 +26% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 23,930 | $29,300 -20% |
| Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA | 870 | $57,950 +58% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 21,040 | $53,950 +47% |
| Bellingham, WA | 1,200 | $51,670 +40% |
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 60. 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.