# Historians

US SOC code 19-3093. Markdown version of https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-3093

Also called: Public historian, Academic historian, Research historian, Government historian, Oral historian.

## In brief

In May 2025, [BLS](https://www.bls.gov/oes/special-requests/oesm25nat.zip) counted **3,450** US historians, with median pay of **$76,750** a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was **3,700**, in May 2008. The earliest figure here is [an estimate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Historical_Association) of **2,500** from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for historians: Digital archives and open-access primary sources, 2005 to 2020.

## What the sources say

### Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 3% from 2025 to 2035. Source: [BLS Employment Projections 2025-35](https://data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=19-3093&ioType=o).

### AI exposure studies

- **50%** 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)

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.

## Historians employment and pay by year

- On record since: 1884
- Latest US employment: 3,450 (May 2025). Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 [5]
- Latest US median pay: $76,750 (May 2025). Source: BLS OEWS May 2025 [8]
- Outlook: +3% by 2035. Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35 [21]

### All 28 years of cited US data

| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1900 | 2,500 (estimate) | n/a | Est., Wikipedia [1] |
| 1940 | 8,000 (estimate) | n/a | Est., AHA [2] |
| 1971 | 19,000 (estimate) | n/a | Est., AHA Perspectives on History [3] |
| 1975 | n/a | $14,500 (estimate) | Est., AHA Perspectives on History [6] |
| 2000 | 1,880 | $39,860 | BLS OEWS 2000 [4] |
| 2003 | 2,350 | $41,880 | BLS OEWS May 2003 [5] |
| 2004 | 2,350 | $44,490 | BLS OEWS May 2004 [5] |
| 2005 | 2,850 | $44,400 | BLS OEWS May 2005 [5] |
| 2006 | 3,090 | $48,520 | BLS OEWS May 2006 [5] |
| 2007 | 3,600 | $50,790 | BLS OEWS May 2007 [5] |
| 2008 | 3,700 | $54,530 | BLS OEWS May 2008 [5] |
| 2009 | 3,620 | $51,050 | BLS OEWS May 2009 [5] |
| 2010 | 3,320 | $53,520 | BLS OEWS May 2010 [5] |
| 2011 | 3,190 | $52,370 | BLS OEWS May 2011 [5] |
| 2012 | 3,340 | $52,480 | BLS OEWS May 2012 [5] |
| 2013 | 3,200 | $55,180 | BLS OEWS May 2013 [5] |
| 2014 | 3,220 | $55,870 | BLS OEWS May 2014 [5] |
| 2015 | 3,010 | $55,800 | BLS OEWS May 2015 [5] |
| 2016 | 2,950 | $55,110 | BLS OEWS May 2016 [5] |
| 2017 | 3,060 | $59,120 | BLS OEWS May 2017 [5] |
| 2018 | 3,040 | $61,140 | BLS OEWS May 2018 [5] |
| 2019 | 3,040 | $63,680 | BLS OEWS May 2019 [5] |
| 2020 | 2,770 | $63,100 | BLS OEWS May 2020 [5] |
| 2021 | 2,910 | $63,940 | BLS OEWS May 2021 [5] |
| 2022 | 3,120 | $64,540 | BLS OEWS May 2022 [5] |
| 2023 | 3,040 | $72,890 | BLS OEWS May 2023 [5] |
| 2024 | 3,140 | $74,050 | BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) [5]; BLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) [9] |
| 2025 | 3,450 | $76,750 | BLS OEWS May 2025 [5] |

## Sources (85)

### Employment series

1. [Wikipedia -- American Historical Association (founding 1884, chartered 1889; AHA membership and the formation of the history profession as a university discipline)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Historical_Association), Wikipedia
2. [AHA -- "What Do Federal Historians Do?" (Perspectives on History, May 1999): documents that the real expansion of federal history came after World War II, preceded by military historians in the 1930s-1940s](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/what-do-federal-historians-do-may-1999/), American Historical Association
3. [AHA Perspectives on History -- "History in Those Hard Times: Looking for Jobs in the 1970s" (September 2009): 2,300 students, 155 jobs at AHA 1971 convention; ~1,200 new PhDs per year](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/history-in-those-hard-times-looking-for-jobs-in-the-1970s-september-2009/), American Historical Association
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. [AHA Perspectives on History -- "History in Those Hard Times: Looking for Jobs in the 1970s" (September 2009): context for 1970s historian salaries and job market conditions](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/history-in-those-hard-times-looking-for-jobs-in-the-1970s-september-2009/), American Historical Association
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 Occupational Outlook Handbook -- Historians: median annual wage $74,050 in May 2024; lowest 10 percent under $38,630; highest 10 percent over $128,500](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/historians.htm), Bureau of Labor Statistics

### Tool eras

10. [Wikipedia -- Leopold von Ranke: "the first to establish a historical seminar"; trained generations of professional historians; introduced source-critical method (Quellenkritik)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_von_Ranke), Wikipedia
11. [JHU Gazette -- "Pioneer of Graduate Seminars in US: Herbert Baxter Adams": Adams launched the historical seminar at Johns Hopkins in 1880; trained next generation of American historians](https://gazette.jhu.edu/2000/10/23/pioneer-of-graduate-seminars-in-us-herbert-baxter-adams/), Johns Hopkins University Gazette
12. [Wikipedia -- American Historical Association: founded 1884, chartered by Congress 1889; American Historical Review launched 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Historical_Association), Wikipedia
13. [Wikipedia -- Microform: history of microfilm in libraries and archives; adoption by research libraries from the 1930s through 1960s for newspaper and document preservation and access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microform), Wikipedia
14. [Wikipedia -- JSTOR: history and development; launched 1995 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; began with 10 journal backruns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSTOR), Wikipedia
15. [HathiTrust Digital Library -- About HathiTrust: established 2008, digitised collection from Google Books and partner libraries; over 17 million volumes](https://www.hathitrust.org/about), HathiTrust Digital Library
16. [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis -- FRASER: Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research; digitised US government documents, BLS bulletins, and historical economic data](https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/), Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
17. [Transkribus (READ-COOP SCE) -- AI handwritten text recognition platform for historical documents: 500+ universities; CER 5-10% on trained corpora; free researcher tier; LLM integration 2025](https://www.transkribus.org/), READ-COOP SCE
18. [Ithaca (DeepMind) -- Nature 2022: deep learning for ancient Greek inscription restoration; 62% accuracy vs. 25% unaided expert; 72% human-AI collaboration](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z?error=cookies_not_supported&code=7212f3ae-9ccf-46c7-ad8c-a5f9d9dff60e), DeepMind / Nature
19. [Institute of Historical Research -- Doing Historical Research in the Age of Generative AI (blog.history.ac.uk, May 2025): AI fabricates archival citations; source-verification role is irreducible](https://blog.history.ac.uk/2025/05/doing-historical-research-in-the-age-of-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-some-points-to-consider/), Institute of Historical Research, University of London
20. [Stat News -- Rise in fraudulent AI-generated citations in academic papers: sixfold increase 2023-2025 (Lancet preprint May 2026)](https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/lancet-study-finds-steep-rise-fraudulent-citations-academic-papers/), STAT News

### Forecasts and exposure studies

21. [BLS Employment Projections 2025-35, National Employment Matrix: 19-3093 Historians (2025: 3.8 thousand; 2035: 3.9 thousand; +3.0%)](https://data.bls.gov/projections/nationalMatrix?queryParams=19-3093&ioType=o), Bureau of Labor Statistics
22. [Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), "GPTs are GPTs", occupation-level exposure data occ\_level.csv (O\*NET-SOC 19-3093.00, human-rated β 0.5)](https://github.com/openai/GPTs-are-GPTs/blob/main/data/occ_level.csv), OpenAI

### Historical notes

23. [Wikipedia -- American Historical Association: founded September 9, 1884; chartered by Congress January 4, 1889; Herbert Baxter Adams as organizing force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Historical_Association), Wikipedia
24. [AHA -- "What Do Federal Historians Do?" (Perspectives on History, May 1999): real expansion of federal history came after WWII; military historians active in 1930s-1940s; William Langer and OSS](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/what-do-federal-historians-do-may-1999/), American Historical Association
25. [AHA Perspectives on History -- "History in Those Hard Times: Looking for Jobs in the 1970s" (September 2009): 2,300 students, ~155 jobs at AHA 1971 convention; the job market crisis that defined the decade](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/history-in-those-hard-times-looking-for-jobs-in-the-1970s-september-2009/), American Historical Association
26. [AHA -- The Troubled Academic Job Market for History (Perspectives on History, February 2016): 45% decline from pre-recession peak; third annual decline; fewer jobs than PhDs for first time in 41 years](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/the-troubled-academic-job-market-for-history-february-2016/), American Historical Association
27. [DeepMind / Nature 2022 -- Ithaca: restoring and attributing ancient texts using deep neural networks; 62% restoration accuracy vs. 25% unaided; human-AI collaboration reaches 72%](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z?error=cookies_not_supported&code=7212f3ae-9ccf-46c7-ad8c-a5f9d9dff60e), DeepMind / Nature
28. [Institute of Historical Research -- Doing Historical Research in the Age of Generative AI (May 2025): AI citation fabrication, source non-traceability, and the irreducible historian's source-verification role](https://blog.history.ac.uk/2025/05/doing-historical-research-in-the-age-of-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-some-points-to-consider/), Institute of Historical Research, University of London

### Predecessors & successors

29. [Wikipedia -- Professionalization and institutionalization of history: early US historians were "talented amateurs, gentlemen of leisure such as George Bancroft and James Ford Rhodes"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professionalization_and_institutionalization_of_history), Wikipedia
30. [JHU Gazette -- "Pioneer of Graduate Seminars in US: Herbert Baxter Adams": Adams' Johns Hopkins seminar trained the first generation of American professional historians](https://gazette.jhu.edu/2000/10/23/pioneer-of-graduate-seminars-in-us-herbert-baxter-adams/), Johns Hopkins University Gazette

### Present-day analysis

- [O\*NET 30.3 — Historians (19-3093.00)](https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/19-3093.00), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Eloundou et al. 2024 — GPTs are GPTs (Science / arXiv 2303.10130): Historians among highest LLM-exposed occupations in the taxonomy](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130), accessed 2026-05-24
- [BLS OES 2024 — Historians (19-3093): median annual wage $63,610; ~3,200 employed; Federal Government largest employer; flat growth projected 2024-2034 for narrow SOC](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes193093.htm), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Institute of Historical Research — Doing Historical Research in the Age of Generative AI (blog.history.ac.uk, May 2025): AI citation fabrication, source non-traceability, and the historian's irreplaceable source-verification role](https://blog.history.ac.uk/2025/05/doing-historical-research-in-the-age-of-generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-some-points-to-consider/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Stat News — Rise in fraudulent AI-generated citations in academic papers: 1 in 2,828 papers (2023) → 1 in 458 (2025) → 1 in 277 (first 7 weeks 2026); Lancet preprint May 2026](https://www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/lancet-study-finds-steep-rise-fraudulent-citations-academic-papers/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [AHA Perspectives on History — AI and historical research: professional expectations and scholarly integrity guidelines (2024-2025)](https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article-category/artificial-intelligence/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Transkribus (READ-COOP) — AI handwritten text recognition for historical documents: 500+ universities; CER 5-10% on trained models; LLM integration 2025; free researcher tier](https://www.transkribus.org/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Ithaca (DeepMind / Nature 2022) — AI restoration of ancient Greek inscriptions: 62% accuracy vs. 25% for unaided expert epigraphers; now available as web tool for classicists](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04448-z?error=cookies_not_supported&code=7212f3ae-9ccf-46c7-ad8c-a5f9d9dff60e), accessed 2026-05-24
- [NEH Office of Digital Humanities — Digital Humanities Advancement Grants: AI literacy for humanities researchers as explicit 2024-2025 funding priority](https://www.neh.gov/divisions/odh), accessed 2026-05-24
- [JSTOR — AI Research Tool: GPT-4o mini / GPT-4.1 nano semantic search across JSTOR corpus; 14,000+ participating institutions; no additional cost; launched July 2025; presented at AHA Annual Meeting January 2025](https://about.jstor.org/products/jstor-platform/features-and-tools/research-tool/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Elicit — AI research assistant: 200M+ papers indexed; systematic literature synthesis, argument extraction, and methodology triage for humanities research (Elicit 2025)](https://elicit.com/), accessed 2026-05-24
- [Omeka / Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media — open-source digital collection and exhibition platform widely used by public historians and historical societies](https://omeka.org/), accessed 2026-05-24

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