Will AI replace Economists?
AI reaches a large part of this job’s work.
47/100
High exposure
More exposed to AI than 73% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 24% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 60% of the work
What the job involves
Conduct research, prepare reports, or formulate plans to address economic problems related to the production and distribution of goods and services or monetary and fiscal policy. May collect and process economic and statistical data using sampling techniques and econometric methods.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Already happening(3)
- Study economic and statistical data in area of specialization, such as finance, labor, or agriculture.
- Compile, analyze, and report data to explain economic phenomena and forecast market trends, applying mathematical models and statistical techniques.
- Provide advice and consultation on economic relationships to businesses, public and private agencies, and other employers.
Within reach(5)
- Study the socioeconomic impacts of new public policies, such as proposed legislation, taxes, services, and regulations.
- Formulate recommendations, policies, or plans to solve economic problems or to interpret markets.
- Explain economic impact of policies to the public.
- Conduct research on economic issues, and disseminate research findings through technical reports or scientific articles in journals.
- Develop economic guidelines and standards, and prepare points of view used in forecasting trends and formulating economic policy.
Out of reach(5)
- Supervise research projects and students' study projects.
- Teach theories, principles, and methods of economics.
- Provide litigation support, such as writing reports for expert testimony or testifying as an expert witness.
- Testify at regulatory or legislative hearings concerning the estimated effects of changes in legislation or public policy, and present recommendations based on cost-benefit analyses.
- Forecast production and consumption of renewable resources and supply, consumption, and depletion of non-renewable resources.
Also called
Economic Advisor · Economic Analyst · Economic Development Specialist · Economist · Tax Economist · Agricultural Economist · Financial Economist · Research Economist
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics