# Mathematicians

US SOC code 15-2021. Markdown version of https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-2021

Also called: Research mathematician, Applied mathematician, Pure mathematician, PhD mathematician.

## In brief

In May 2025, [BLS](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25nat.zip) counted **2,030** US mathematicians, with median pay of **$126,710** a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was **2,220**, in May 2023. The earliest figure here is [an estimate](https://www.ams.org/about-us/ams-history) of **1,200** from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for mathematicians: arXiv, Lean 4, and the formalization movement, 2005 to 2022.

## What the sources say

### Official outlook

BLS projects employment to change +0.6% from 2025 to 2035. Source: [BLS Employment Projections 2025-35](https://data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=15-2021&ioType=o).

### AI exposure studies

- **69%** of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. [Eloundou and others, 2023](https://github.com/openai/GPTs-are-GPTs/blob/main/data/occ_level.csv)
- **0.047** estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. [Frey and Osborne, 2013](https://oms-www.files.svdcdn.com/production/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf)

### Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.047. BLS counted **3,030** of these jobs in May 2013 and **2,030** in May 2025. The count moved sharply in one step, May 2020 to May 2021, when BLS changed how it estimates these counts, so no change is derived here.

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

## Mathematicians employment and pay by year

- On record since: 1876
- Latest US employment: 2,030 (May 2025). Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 [5]
- Latest US median pay: $126,710 (May 2025). Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 [8]
- Outlook: +0.6% by 2035. Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 [26]

### All 28 years of cited US data

| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1900 | 1,200 (estimate) | n/a | Est., AMS History [1] |
| 1940 | 2,500 (estimate) | n/a | Est., AMS [1] |
| 1950 | 4,000 | n/a | Decennial Census 1900 [2] |
| 1960 | 17,000 | $8,500 (estimate) | Decennial Census 1960 (employment) [3]; Est., US General Schedule pay scale 1960 and… (pay) [6] |
| 2000 | 3,140 | $68,640 | BLS OEWS 2000 [4] |
| 2003 | 2,470 | $78,290 | BLS OEWS May 2003 [5] |
| 2004 | 2,410 | $81,240 | BLS OEWS May 2004 [5] |
| 2005 | 2,930 | $80,920 | BLS OEWS May 2005 [5] |
| 2006 | 2,840 | $86,930 | BLS OEWS May 2006 [5] |
| 2007 | 3,160 | $90,870 | BLS OEWS May 2007 [5] |
| 2008 | 2,770 | $95,150 | BLS OEWS May 2008 [5] |
| 2009 | 2,770 | $93,580 | BLS OEWS May 2009 [5] |
| 2010 | 2,830 | $99,380 | BLS OEWS May 2010 [5] |
| 2011 | 2,980 | $101,040 | BLS OEWS May 2011 [5] |
| 2012 | 3,250 | $101,360 | BLS OEWS May 2012 [5] |
| 2013 | 3,030 | $102,440 | BLS OEWS May 2013 [5] |
| 2014 | 3,130 | $103,720 | BLS OEWS May 2014 [5] |
| 2015 | 3,170 | $111,110 | BLS OEWS May 2015 [5] |
| 2016 | 2,730 | $105,810 | BLS OEWS May 2016 [5] |
| 2017 | 2,730 | $103,010 | BLS OEWS May 2017 [5] |
| 2018 | 2,580 | $101,900 | BLS OEWS May 2018 [5] |
| 2019 | 2,630 | $105,030 | BLS OEWS May 2019 [5] |
| 2020 | 2,460 | $110,860 | BLS OEWS May 2020 [5] |
| 2021 | 1,770 | $108,100 | BLS OEWS May 2021 [5] |
| 2022 | 2,070 | $112,110 | BLS OEWS May 2022 [5] |
| 2023 | 2,220 | $116,440 | BLS OEWS May 2023 [5] |
| 2024 | 2,220 | $121,680 | BLS OEWS May 2024 [5] |
| 2025 | 2,030 | $126,710 | BLS OEWS May 2025 [5] |

## Sources (91)

### Employment series

1. [AMS History -- "History of the American Mathematical Society" (AMS membership 357 by 1901)](https://www.ams.org/about-us/ams-history), American Mathematical Society
2. [US Census Bureau -- "Occupational Trends in the United States 1900 to 1950" (1958); 348% mathematician growth 1950-1960 documented in 1962 supplementary reports](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1958/demo/occupational-trends-1958.html), US Census Bureau
3. [US Census -- 1960 Supplementary Reports (PC-S1 series): professional, technical, and kindred workers; mathematician growth 348% documented; NDEA context in National Defense Education Act Wikipedia entry](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1962/dec/population-pc-s1-40.html), US Census Bureau
4. [BLS OES 2000 national estimates (flat file)](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oes00nat.zip), Bureau of Labor Statistics
5. BLS OEWS, national cross-industry estimates (flat file), Bureau of Labor Statistics. Editions: [2003](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm03nat.zip), [2004](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm04nat.zip), [2005](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm05nat.zip), [2006](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm06nat.zip), [2007](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm07nat.zip), [2008](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm08nat.zip), [2009](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm09nat.zip), [2010](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm10nat.zip), [2011](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm11nat.zip), [2012](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm12nat.zip), [2013](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm13nat.zip), [2014](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm14nat.zip), [2015](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm15nat.zip), [2016](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm16nat.zip), [2017](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm17nat.zip), [2018](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm18nat.zip), [2019](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm19nat.zip), [2020](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm20nat.zip), [2021](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm21nat.zip), [2022](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm22nat.zip), [2023](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm23nat.zip), [2024](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm24nat.zip), [2025](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25nat.zip)

### Wage series

6. [US General Schedule pay scale 1960 and historical academic salary context (NBER / AMS salary surveys)](https://www.ams.org/about-us/ams-history), American Mathematical Society / historical estimate
7. [BLS OES 2000 national estimates (flat file)](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oes00nat.zip), Bureau of Labor Statistics
8. BLS OEWS, national cross-industry estimates (flat file), Bureau of Labor Statistics. Editions: [2003](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm03nat.zip), [2004](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm04nat.zip), [2005](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm05nat.zip), [2006](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm06nat.zip), [2007](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm07nat.zip), [2008](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm08nat.zip), [2009](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm09nat.zip), [2010](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm10nat.zip), [2011](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm11nat.zip), [2012](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm12nat.zip), [2013](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm13nat.zip), [2014](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm14nat.zip), [2015](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm15nat.zip), [2016](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm16nat.zip), [2017](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm17nat.zip), [2018](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm18nat.zip), [2019](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm19nat.zip), [2020](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm20nat.zip), [2021](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm21nat.zip), [2022](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm22nat.zip), [2023](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm23nat.zip), [2025](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25nat.zip)
9. [BLS OEWS May 2024, national cross-industry estimates (flat file)](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm24nat.zip), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

### Tool eras

10. [AMS History -- "History of the American Mathematical Society" (professional society and journal founding, research university model)](https://www.ams.org/about-us/ams-history), American Mathematical Society
11. [MacTutor History of Mathematics -- "Early Mathematics in America" (Johns Hopkins, J.J. Sylvester, American Journal of Mathematics)](https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Early_Maths_in_America/), MacTutor / University of St Andrews
12. [AMS Proceedings -- "The Mathematical Sciences and World War II" by Mina Rees (1980), documenting the Applied Mathematics Panel and its scope](https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/math-history/hmath1-rees21.pdf), American Mathematical Society
13. [Britannica -- "Operations Research: History" (WWII origins, wartime applied mathematics programs)](https://www.britannica.com/topic/operations-research/History), Encyclopaedia Britannica
14. [Wikipedia -- "National Defense Education Act" (1958 NDEA: $1B funding, 1,500 annual graduate fellowships, acute mathematician shortage cited)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act), Wikipedia
15. [US Census -- 1960 Supplementary Reports (PC-S1 series): mathematician growth 348% over the decade documented](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1962/dec/population-pc-s1-40.html), US Census Bureau
16. [Wolfram Blog -- "We've Come a Long Way in 30 Years" (Stephen Wolfram on the history of CAS and Mathematica, context of MACSYMA and predecessor systems)](https://blog.wolfram.com/2018/06/21/weve-come-a-long-way-in-30-years-but-you-havent-seen-anything-yet/), Wolfram Research
17. [MathWorks -- "A Brief History of MATLAB" (Cleve Moler, PC-MATLAB 1984 debut, MathWorks incorporation December 1984)](https://www.mathworks.com/company/technical-articles/a-brief-history-of-matlab.html), MathWorks
18. [Wolfram Blog -- "Celebrating a Third of a Century of Mathematica" (Mathematica 1.0 June 23, 1988; symbolic integration better than any human by 1988)](https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/10/celebrating-a-third-of-a-century-of-mathematica-and-looking-forward/), Wolfram Research
19. [NBER -- Borjas and Doran, "The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians" (NBER Working Paper 17800, June 2012)](https://www.nber.org/papers/w17800), National Bureau of Economic Research
20. [Inside Higher Ed -- "How Soviet Migration Impacted the Field of Mathematics" (2012 coverage of Borjas-Doran NBER findings)](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/09/how-soviet-migration-impacted-field-mathematics), Inside Higher Ed
21. [arXiv.org -- Mathematics archive section (math.AG, math.NT, etc.), operational since 1992 as the primary preprint server for mathematical research](https://arxiv.org/archive/math), Cornell University / arXiv
22. [Elicit -- AI Research Assistant for Systematic Literature Search (2021 onward, used by research mathematicians for literature survey)](https://elicit.com/), Elicit
23. [DeepMind -- "AI achieves silver-medal standard solving International Mathematical Olympiad problems" (AlphaProof + AlphaGeometry 2, July 2024)](https://deepmind.google/blog/ai-solves-imo-problems-at-silver-medal-level/), Google DeepMind
24. [Nature -- "Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning with reinforcement learning" (AlphaProof paper, February 2025)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09833-y?error=cookies_not_supported&code=3b6fd6ff-f359-4166-be75-303a731c7af2), Nature / Google DeepMind
25. [Eloundou et al. (2023/2024) -- "GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models" (Science 2024; Mathematicians rated 100% LLM-exposed)](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0998), OpenAI / Science

### Forecasts and exposure studies

26. [BLS Employment Projections 2025-35, National Employment Matrix: 15-2021 Mathematicians (2025: 2.2 thousand; 2035: 2.2 thousand; +0.6%)](https://data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=15-2021&ioType=o), Bureau of Labor Statistics
27. [Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), "GPTs are GPTs", occupation-level exposure data occ\_level.csv (O\*NET-SOC 15-2021.00, human-rated β 0.69)](https://github.com/openai/GPTs-are-GPTs/blob/main/data/occ_level.csv), OpenAI
28. [Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?", Appendix (SOC 15-2021 Mathematicians: probability 0.047, rank 135 of 702)](https://oms-www.files.svdcdn.com/production/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf), Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford

### Historical notes

29. [AMS -- "History of the American Mathematical Society" (founding 1888, renamed 1894, 357 members by 1901)](https://www.ams.org/about-us/ams-history), American Mathematical Society
30. [AMS -- Mina Rees, "The Mathematical Sciences and World War II" (1980)](https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/math-history/hmath1-rees21.pdf), American Mathematical Society
31. [Wikipedia -- "National Defense Education Act" (1958 NDEA; acute mathematician shortage; 1,500 annual fellowships; Title IV for college teacher supply)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act), Wikipedia
32. [NBER -- Borjas and Doran, "The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians" (NBER Working Paper 17800, 2012)](https://www.nber.org/papers/w17800), National Bureau of Economic Research
33. [Nature -- "Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning with reinforcement learning" (AlphaProof, February 2025); DeepMind blog (July 2024)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09833-y?error=cookies_not_supported&code=3b6fd6ff-f359-4166-be75-303a731c7af2), Nature / Google DeepMind

### Predecessors & successors

34. [MacTutor -- "Early Mathematics in America" (pre-professional era mathematics faculty)](https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Early_Maths_in_America/), MacTutor / University of St Andrews
35. [Research for Life -- "The History of Johns Hopkins University: The First Research University" (1876 model)](https://researchforlife.org/blog/history-of-johns-hopkins/), Research for Life
36. [AMS -- "The Mathematical Sciences and World War II" by Mina Rees (Applied Mathematics Panel)](https://www.ams.org/publicoutreach/math-history/hmath1-rees21.pdf), American Mathematical Society
37. [BLS OOH -- Mathematicians and Statisticians career paths section (data science as common transition)](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/mathematicians-and-statisticians.htm), Bureau of Labor Statistics

### Present-day analysis

- [Eloundou et al. 2024 — GPTs are GPTs (Science)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130), accessed 2026-05-24
- [O\*NET 30.3 — Mathematicians (15-2021.00)](https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-2021.00), accessed 2026-05-24
- [BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Mathematicians (2024-2034)](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/mathematicians.htm), accessed 2026-05-24
- [DeepMind — AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2: IMO 2024 Silver-Medal Performance (2024)](https://deepmind.google/blog/ai-solves-imo-problems-at-silver-medal-level/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [DeepMind — AlphaGeometry: Solving Olympiad-Level Geometry from Scratch (Nature, 2024)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06747-5?error=cookies_not_supported&code=492c2efb-b2f0-40f2-8300-cc2ad473ceaf), accessed 2026-05-24
- [OpenAI — o3 and o4-mini System Card (2025)](https://openai.com/index/o3-o4-mini-system-card/), accessed 2026-06-22
- [Quanta Magazine — Terrence Tao on AI and Mathematical Research (2025)](https://www.quantamagazine.org/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [McKinsey Global Institute — The Economic Potential of Generative AI (2023)](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Wolfram Mathematica 14 — LLM Notebook Assistant (2024)](https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [MathWorks MATLAB AI — Live Editor Copilot (2024-2025)](https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/live-editor.html), accessed 2026-06-22
- [Elicit — AI Research Assistant for Systematic Literature Search (2025)](https://elicit.com/), accessed 2026-05-24

How to read these figures: https://futurehistory.earth/methodology. Every figure links to its own source; gaps stay gaps.