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

Writers and Authors

5.8/10 job score
AUTOMATION RISK
49%
risk level
POLLING
GROWTH
4.1%
by 2031
WAGES
$69,510
or $33.42 hourly
VOLUME
49,410
as of 2021
Vote
Comments (46)

What is the risk of automation?

We calculate this occupation to have an automation risk score of 49% (Start worrying)

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated
Qualities required for this occupation:
Originality
Persuasion
Social Perceptiveness
Key
very important
quite important
[Show all metrics]

Impact of Chat GPT on this occupation

We've received many comments and emails about Chat GPT and it's impact on this occupation. It's very impressive software, so people are understandably worried and/or excited.

However, something important to note with regards to the score we've calculated here, is that this occupation is comprised of many different types of job roles. Some examples of these include Advertising Writer, Blurb Writer, Copywriter and Screenwriter.

Some roles/tasks are more susceptible than other's to being automated by Chat GPT, but the score we've calculated is one that's an amalgamation of all of them.

Unfortunately, the source for our data (o*net) doesn't split this category up to the individual roles, so we can't calculate a score for each of them. If they do at some point in the future, we'll do the same, and generate scores accordingly.

Writing occupations aren't dead, but they are changing, so the best advice we can offer is to keep up to date with the latest developments, and use the tools available to your advantage.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

How likely do you think this occupation will be taken over by robots/AI within the next 20 years?

How quickly is this occupation growing?

The number of 'Writers and Authors' job openings is expected to rise 4.1% by 2031
'Writers and Authors' is expected to be an average growing occupation in comparison to other occupations.
* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2021 and 2031.
Updated projections are due Sep 2023.

What are the median wages for 'Writers and Authors' in the United States?

In 2021 the median annual wage for 'Writers and Authors' was $69,510, or $33.42 hourly
'Writers and Authors' are paid 51.9% higher than the national median wage, which stands at $45,760
* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

How many people are employed as writers and authors?

As of 2021 there were 49,410 people employed as Writers and Authors within the United States.
This represents around 0.04% of the employed workforce across the country.
Put another way, around 1 in 2 thousand people are employed as Writers and Authors.

Job description

Originate and prepare written material, such as scripts, stories, advertisements, and other material.

SOC Code: 27-3043.00

Resources

Will Chat GPT spell the end of blogging?

Here's a very informative video from Ricky Kesler from Income School about Chat GPT as it relates to blogging (and SEO). We think it contains great advice, and can be applied to all sorts of writing job roles, not just bloggers.

If you're thinking of starting a new career, or looking to change jobs, we've created a handy job search tool which might just help you land that perfect new role.

Search jobs in your local area

Comments

Leave a comment

Nil (Highly likely) says
Copy.ai website already writes blog posts in seconds. This field is already lost.
Dec 12, 2022 at 12:58 PM
Eden (No chance) says
I wouldn't read a book written by AI. Replacing authors would promote illiteracy.
Oct 03, 2022 at 07:58 PM
Someone who is passionate about storytelling (No chance) says
The thing about creative writing is that it requires, well, creativity. Humans are the only things on earth with the ability to think creatively. It's so impressive, that it can never be replicated. Storytelling is not a matter of algorithms or programs, it is generated by raw human emotion and thoughts. Some may gesture to the AI programs people are making that can auto-generate a story or script, but have you actually seen what those things make? Their stories are absolutely ridiculous, and are meant to be laughed at for how bad they are. If anything, these programs are further proof that no creative art-form, be it writing, painting, or the sort, can never truly be replaced by the machines. If I were you, I wouldn't worry about it, not for another billion years.
Apr 15, 2022 at 06:25 PM
PKN (Highly likely) says
I work with AI within the book industry. It's already incredibly advanced.
Feb 10, 2022 at 09:06 PM
Zen (No chance) says
Writing fiction needs creativity so robots won't replace human on this
Feb 04, 2022 at 10:54 AM
Sparsha (No chance) says
Writing takes a lot of skill that AI could never be programmed to do.
Nov 06, 2021 at 12:25 PM
Vuk Lazarevic (Small chance) says
There are various AI rephrasing and writing tools but these are not advanced enough to create non-plagiarized content.
Oct 01, 2021 at 11:00 AM
R (No chance) says
Ok I just saw this and wanted to comment so bad. I’m not planning on becoming a writer but even I’m saying what to this one lol. Replace writers and authors with robots? Can’t say I see how robotizing authors would work considering an author writes from his/her own originality and own imagination/thoughts. Unless the ai is self aware too I doubt this very much so
Sep 30, 2021 at 04:13 AM
Being (No chance) says
No technology can take over creativity because it comes from the brain and heart and these twos come from Allah and Allah blessed every human being with these twos (heart and brain), and no power can take over nature because the nature's Lord is Superpower.
Sep 12, 2021 at 02:31 AM
Annette Partida (No chance) says
Robots will never have the emotional/psychological/spiritual/organic/limited experience humans do. Robots are automated and cannot die physically. They will never have a body that bleeds or ages. They will never have to work hard, endlessly, and depend on hope for a goal. They do not eat nor sleep nor give physical birth nor feel pain when they are lied to or betrayed. Because they will never have the experience of truly being human, they will never be able to reconstruct the human world and all of its wonders and horrors, or even the simplest joy of having a pet goldfish or the despair we feel when scrapping a knee when they fall off a bike, in their code successfully. Singularity is nearer than we think, but there will be human aspects a robot will never be able to replicate because they will never be human. Unless they are hybridised, but that is another topic completely.
Aug 31, 2021 at 10:11 AM
ali (No chance) says
if robots replace writing then they probably will replace everything
Jul 08, 2021 at 07:12 AM
Simon Cherilev (No chance) says
Because, we need feeling and creativity to create a new word in the boundaries of words and pages.
Jun 19, 2021 at 04:36 AM
it's likely says
I think AI will be able to write good books in five to ten years. The question is if people will want to read them.
Apr 25, 2021 at 09:53 PM
Rikki (No chance) says
LOL. XD
I'd never read a book written by a robot who's just a piece of junk.
Apr 20, 2021 at 01:42 PM
Tim Marsh says
This segment needs to be broken into subgroups. We're a long way from AI-written novels that are popular. We already have AI writing product descriptions, weather reports, and social media content. GPT-3 makes writing faster for human writers, putting others out of work.

The problem is not creativity, it is continuity and logic. Both of these issues are currently being tackled and already causing improvements. Computers are better at thinking something random than people are. Creativity is the process of recognising the valuable bits in the randomness and discarding the rest. The rest of creativity is simply problem solving, and we're seeing AI get better at this quickly.

Advances in these areas will continue to erode away the most basic writing jobs. Song lyrics won't be far behind.
Mar 22, 2021 at 06:32 AM
Ella says
I’ve heard differently. I bet that there’s more of a chance, coz can’t you just program a robot to analyse a genre or a book and produce a story that’s enjoyable? You wouldn’t even need an editor for it because robots won’t make mistakes unless their programmed to. I think robots will take the job, but authors should remain!
Feb 26, 2021 at 07:19 AM
Anonymouse (Small chance) says
Harry Potter and the Order of the Thumbdrive

It's happening, we're too late
Feb 17, 2021 at 04:14 AM
Hoda Ghazy (No chance) says
How could a robot have the sense of poet or a writer. However science will be like in the near future but nothing is like a man with his mental power, feelings or experience.
Feb 13, 2021 at 05:38 PM
Millie (No chance) says
While I do believe that future robots will be able to create a story on the level of human writers, I do not believe that there will ever come a time in which humans don't enjoy writing, and as long as Humans enjoy writing, they will write books, which can be published and then there are no need for the robots to write.
Feb 08, 2021 at 02:34 AM
Anonymous (Highly likely) says
No one is safe. We will all be obsolete. No exceptions.
Dec 16, 2020 at 06:13 AM
Logan J. (Small chance) says
Because it's possible to create a program like that, but not likely in a while.
Nov 17, 2020 at 02:47 PM
Lora says
Writers are sad and lonely like robots? Writers and robots are the same. All they ever think about is the lack of love in their lives. <\3
Nov 04, 2020 at 09:10 PM
MooshroomsRCool (No chance) says
Robots can replace fact writing, but fiction cannot be replicated without creativity, imagination, soul, and emotion. To write about a human, and from a human perspective, you must know how it feels to be human.
Oct 30, 2020 at 01:16 PM
Roland (Could go either way) says
GPT3 will likely condemn mediocre writers to a new career as it is capable of generating mediocre blogs.
Oct 22, 2020 at 05:43 AM
Anon (Likely) says
Seems like the general consensus is "robots don't have a brain / creativity / a soul, therefore they will never be able to reproduce what human writers are doing now." But robots don't need souls to produce writing. GPT-3 is already astonishingly good at producing text, and I don't think OpenAI is finished pushing this technology to its limits. At the very least, text synthesis will augment the amount of articles one writer can produce for some website, and the number of writers needed will shrink.
Aug 22, 2020 at 05:54 PM
Anon (Highly likely) says
Exactly what I thought. And this is GPT-3. Imagine the potential of GPT-4, GPT-5
Dec 04, 2020 at 01:25 PM
Anon 2 (No chance) says
In relation to the mere act of putting words on a page, I'm in somewhat agreement with you. AI are already producing blog posts, albeit ones that read strangely to people. I have no doubt this will be refined in the future to be entirely coherent.

In terms of fiction writing, it's less about being able to produce writing and more about being able to produce writing that resonates with people. AI have the capacity to build relations as inputted by humans; they do not have the innate sense to build this alone. This also ignores that 'the novel' as we understand it today is a relatively modern invention. Literature may radically change again in the future.

I feel about automation of literature as I do about ebooks: while they may dominate a certain part of the sector, they're hardly the be-all and end-all they were predicted to be. Or maybe as a writer I'm simply stroking my own ego and over-hyping my own importance and believe that writing for its own sake is the important thing to focus on here. ;-) Who knows?
Jan 07, 2021 at 03:52 PM
my name is not important says
a wise man once told me, that one can never write something truly original, as every story has already been written by someone. The only thing you can do is mixing the known parts together in a 'creative' and 'new' way. Dreaming of maybe becoming a writer one day, that sounded quite depressing to me back then. And I didn't (become a writer). But now getting older, every time I think about the wise man's words, I more and more hear myself thinking "fu** he was right".

So yeah. AI probably gets to a point, where it is able to produce some decent text.

pretty humiliating for humankind, but true I'm afraid.
Oct 25, 2021 at 06:49 PM
Sebastian (No chance) says
Imagination cannot be replicated.
Jul 28, 2020 at 11:48 AM
Harsh reply says
You lack the imagination to think further
Aug 19, 2021 at 02:07 PM
alicia (No chance) says
The creativity is fundamental, nothing replaces it
Jul 10, 2020 at 03:08 PM
someone (no chance) (No chance) says
of course they can't, even in the future. no matter how smart AIs are, they can never, ever be creative, and therefore cannot be capable of writing.
Jun 01, 2020 at 03:15 PM
Arlott (Highly likely) says
You clearly don't understand what an artificial intelligence is. If it isn't creative, it's not an artificial intelligence. Stories written by AIs today are generally written by Neural Networks. They're learning algorithms that take human input and reproduce a work of fiction by learning how it's done by humans. As it stands, there isn't enough "clean content" to teach the AI, so the stories end up muddled, even if coherent. This will change as Neural Networks develop a method of weeding out what we call "muddy content"; incoherent texts taught to the AI due to the human failure factor.



Oct 16, 2020 at 05:36 AM
Elizabeth Annette Wolter (No chance) says
that is ridiculous! You cannot program an AI to have creativity or an imagination, its not something you can just feed to a machine! AI don't have imagination because they are programmed to do specific things! Without a soul or an imagination. Human creativity is something you can never replace or replicate - websites can't do it either! YOU are clearly the one who doesn't understand anything about Artificial Intelligence.
Jun 21, 2022 at 11:05 PM
Jason (Small chance) says
I have seen a youtuber program an AI to write a story and it did that. However the story made no sense to listen to. This was not an amazingly high budget production but it highlighted that AI still needs to develop before it can properly replicate the output a human writer could manage. I could see it happening in 10-15 years though I imagine most people would prefer a story written by a human
May 26, 2020 at 01:08 AM
Jim (Small chance) says
The thing with anything artsy (such as writing) is that humans will continue to do it to express themselves even if robots will be able to do it better. I think there will always be humans creating art and making at least small amounts of profit from it.
May 02, 2020 at 12:20 AM
六小六hh (Small chance) says
I don’t think it will. The profession of an author requires creativity. I don’t think it can be achieved according to the current level of technology.
Apr 01, 2020 at 03:49 AM
Linsay (No chance) says
It take an imagination to write stories AI have none.
Mar 24, 2020 at 09:51 PM
Elizabeth (No chance) says
To be an author you need to come up with creative ideas on your own. It's almost impossible for AI to come up with stories the way humans do.
Mar 08, 2020 at 07:51 PM
no u (No chance) says
come on, have you seen bot developed stories? botnik isn't anywhere close to hp
Dec 04, 2019 at 06:48 PM
Dot (No chance) says
Robots will only become writers when Artificial Intelligence matures. The human race might be extinct by then.
Nov 28, 2019 at 04:24 PM
Fef (Likely) says
There exist today AI capable of writing stories by mixing the styles of one or various authors. Maybe not masterpieces but for your everyday novel reader will be more than enough
Oct 30, 2019 at 11:04 AM
Paige (Small chance) says
The arts are based on the conscious. When a robot has full consciousness and can tell me what it’s like to be a robot that is when I will, not compete, but welcome said robot as a sentient being capable of completing wonderful works of art.
Oct 29, 2019 at 07:41 AM
Jak (No chance) says
It's a purely creative field. Even if a robot could do it, automation isn't the point of art. It's quality, not quantity.
Sep 23, 2019 at 10:08 AM
Simone (Small chance) says
Writing is human communication. There might be a market in the future for custom stories written by AI but since it’s an art, there will always be a need for humans writing for humans for the sake of history, progression and expression.
Sep 21, 2019 at 11:21 AM
Robert Winning (No chance) says
A machine has no soul, it can’t produce art
Sep 16, 2019 at 08:27 AM
Howl says
Robots can indeed make things like music. I just wanted you to know.
Feb 19, 2020 at 04:39 PM
Jason says
What is a soul though? Is it something inside the human body exclusively? Is it in living creatures?

I think an intelligence should be considered to have a soul if it was capable of seeing itself and recognising others, if it could communicate without assistance or restraints, if you could provide it with information and perspective and it could formulate its own opinion

AI can very much create art, however the art they make is not an expression of themselves because these are AI. They simulate intelligence. But they only do what we tell them to. I don't consider what most AI makes to be art because they are not expressing themselves, they're just doing what we tell them to do without any real personal investment because they have nothing to invest

If we wanted them to make real art without instruction the only way would be to make them live some kind of life and then ask them to express themselves through some form of art be it a painting or a story
May 26, 2020 at 01:22 AM
Maquette Alforque (Small chance) says
Creative human intelligence has the quality of being ever evolving. Robotic intelligence might be able to simulate this, cleverly using a vast and increasing database to draw from in "writing something new," but there will be no evidence of genius. There will no longer be great writing.
Sep 13, 2019 at 08:00 AM
John Doe (Highly likely) says
We are already seeing stories written by robots, and though made fun of for their non-sensibility, such as a fan-fiction about Harry Potter written by an AI, in 20 years I don't see it as unlikely that not only will fully understandable stories be written by robots, but that publication companies will use them as a cheaper alternative to paying real authors.
Jun 18, 2019 at 04:26 AM
Dusty Rose says
Given that the vast majority of traditionally published authors don't even earn enough money to live on, with many of them even below the poverty line, I don't think "robots as a cheaper alternative to real authors" is a viable argument. Writers like JK Rowling and Stephen King, who make bank, are one-in-a-million outliers.
Jun 18, 2019 at 09:42 PM
Paige says
Tech enthusiasts such as yourself fail to understand the arts and that’s why you think it’s possible for AI to be able to do it. Art is based on human consciousness. Scientists still know very little about the entirety of the human mind. Seems only people in the tech community believe the human mind= a machine that can be copied. If AI can “understand” a script it is ultimately because it’s programmer (a human) understood it. AI can only do anything if it’s human has computed it to do so and I think a lot of people misunderstand this. When I watched a film “written” by an AI on youtube I was shocked at how many people placed the meaning on the robot versus the film crew (a group of humans) that actually applied meaning and sense to the gibberish it churned it out.
Oct 29, 2019 at 07:38 AM
MM says
Current AIs are programmed to learn and improve. It's called machine learning. So the argument "it can only do it if humans teach it" is invalid. I don't know about the rest.
Mar 27, 2021 at 10:54 PM
ByAli says
Yeah, nah. Robots could never replace an author/writer; it’s about passion! If you don’t have creativity, what will you right about? Even if you do, your stories won’t be interesting, or nice to read.
Jun 14, 2019 at 05:32 AM
seojin (No chance) says
if you have the job that needs 3C, then it probably don't be automated.
critical thinking? 2/5, creativity? 5/5, collaboration? 4/5! 11/15, quite low probablity of automating.
Jun 03, 2019 at 08:42 AM
Peter Murphy (Could go either way) says
Given the drop in writers' earnings, it would not be viable.
Unless, of course, there are those robots who just have to tell their stories!
May 23, 2019 at 02:40 PM
4BASKETBALL says
Robots don't have a brain to explore and really come from the heart because robots don't have a heart.
Apr 24, 2019 at 03:38 PM
A. P. (No chance) says
That's not how it works...
Jun 15, 2020 at 10:42 AM

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