Overview
1. Automation Risk
2. User Poll
3. Growth
4. Wages
5. Volume
Decription
Resources
Comments

Technical Writers

AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
79%
risk level
POLLING
53%
Based on 296 votes
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
5.5%
by year 2031
WAGES
$79,960
or $38.44 per hour
Volume
48,620
as of 2022
SUMMARY
JOB SCORE
4.7/10

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Comments (12)

Automation risk

79% (High Risk)

High Risk (61-80%): Jobs in this category face a significant threat from automation, as many of their tasks can be easily automated using current or near-future technologies.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

We haven't found any important qualities of this job that can't be easily automated

User poll

53% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted they are unsure if this occupation will be automated. However, the automation risk level we have generated suggests a much higher chance of automation: 79% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Technical Writers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?






Sentiment

The following graph(s) are included wherever there is a substantial amount of votes to render meaningful data. These visual representations display user poll results over time, providing a significant indication of sentiment trends.

Sentiment over time (yearly)

Growth

Moderate growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Technical Writers' job openings is expected to rise 5.5% by 2031

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2021 and 2031
Updated projections are due 09-2023.

Wages

High paid relative to other professions

In 2022, the median annual wage for 'Technical Writers' was $79,960, or $38 per hour

'Technical Writers' were paid 72.7% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $46,310

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Moderate range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2022 there were 48,620 people employed as 'Technical Writers' within the United States.

This represents around < 0.001% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 3 thousand people are employed as 'Technical Writers'.

Job description

Write technical materials, such as equipment manuals, appendices, or operating and maintenance instructions. May assist in layout work.

SOC Code: 27-3042.00

Resources

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Comments

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Psalm (Moderate) says
If AI can perform well enough and at a lower cost, our expertise will lose its value. In many offices, we are already considered a luxury. It will be even harder to justify our worth if AI can make the writing process less time-consuming and painful for engineers. Many jobs, not just technical writing, are seen as luxuries by employers who lack the necessary skills or time to do them properly. If AI can reduce time and costs while producing reasonable content with minimal input, what will be left for technical writers to do?

More importantly, why would anyone pay for a professional to do it?
Mar 09, 2022 at 02:43 PM
guest (Low) says
It's like saying teachers won't be needed because we will have textbooks to study from. Except we are talking here about replacing authors of textbooks (not to mention the fact that textbooks already exist and teachers are still there).
Aug 08, 2021 at 11:15 PM
Alen (Uncertain) says
Writing requires creativity and contextual understanding of a particular work. Also, the audience of the written work is humans and it requires a certain sense of being able to understand another human to produce work that the humans can understand. So, I'm not really sure if robots would be able to do that unless they reach the level of intelligence that humans have.
Jan 20, 2021 at 04:24 PM
Liu Qin (Moderate) says
More and more technical documentation has become structural writing. Writing documentation is more and more like writing a code. AI will learn writing a code easily in the future.
Nov 22, 2020 at 03:26 AM
Mike says
We are already using robotics to automatically generate software video demos from structured written content. Robotic writing will be a huge help initially, followed by even more.

We are already implementing automated structured reuse on a large scale. People should not underestimate the potential of computational linguistics when combined with machine learning and a knowledge graph-rich future.

Although intelligent content (structured content with human-declared intent) cannot be automated yet, we are already auto-classifying content with additional semantic metadata (taxonomies). AI/ML will continue to assist and eventually replace a significant portion of low-level content development, which will elevate the writer's role to that of an information architect/designer.

Object-oriented content will then become a service called Content-as-a-Service (CaaS), much like an electrical distribution grid.

In TechComm and MarComm, we have been evolving towards this model for many years.
Feb 11, 2022 at 08:37 PM
Mick Davidson (Uncertain) says
There’s a massive human element to tech writing, but never underestimate technology and where it might be in five years time. Also don’t ignore wishful thinking and subject ignorance.
Jul 11, 2020 at 05:09 AM
Janet says
Who will write about AI systems? AI itself?
Apr 26, 2020 at 12:28 AM
Mathew (No chance) says
Technical writing goes well beyond just writing the actual sentences.

I cannot fathom how AI would somehow be able to do all the things that are required to be done in order to complete a technical writing piece.

AI has already taken over the writing niche . . . people no longer need education to write, software helps them do it. That is all AI could ever do for a writer.
Jan 14, 2020 at 04:24 AM
Tad says
Until both the end-user and the engineer are both automated there is no feasible way to fully automate this job. You can have some IT tech writer positions that become more efficient through perhaps some auto-text generation but expecting this to translate into any hardware based product is extremely difficult to automate
Aug 06, 2019 at 11:08 PM
Anthony says
We already have artificial intelligence which is capable of blogging and reporting news articles without human beings being capable of detecting that this information has been written by what is effectively an algorithm, so it is incomprehensible (to me) that within the coming decades, for the concept of what it is to be a “writer” to remain unphased. I myself have worked as a writer and author and I can emphatically state that artificial intelligence is going to usher in a paradigm shift for those who are currently connected to the field of written work. The profession will remain intact until the end of the century, but swift and vast changes are to be had; this is an inevitability which we must accept, embrace, and use to empower modern day writers
Jul 16, 2019 at 09:50 PM
Mother (Low) says
Every company has their own standards for writing. The more successful writers are able to inject some personality into their writing.
Apr 26, 2019 at 05:34 PM
SEBASTIAN ARBOLEDA says
How will they take the job if you need to know the systems that you are writing about?
Apr 01, 2019 at 12:17 AM

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