Time Machine

Clergy

Name: Clergy: employment and wages since 1870
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 57,200 US clergy, with median pay of $60,810 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 58,080, in May 2024, close to the May 2025 count. The earliest figure here is a Census count of 43,000 from 1870, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for clergy: Church management software, livestreaming, and online sermons, 1995 to 2020.

Official statistic: latest count and pay, highest count.Researched context: earliest figure.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 2.4% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

Official statistic

AI exposure studies

23.8% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023 Official statistic
0.0081 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 Official statistic

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.0081. BLS counted 45,020 of these jobs in May 2013 and 57,200 in May 2025 (+27%, a change derived by Future History).

Official statistic

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.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Clergy: jobs and pay since 1870 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-2011

Chicago

Future History. "Clergy: jobs and pay since 1870." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-2011.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_21_2011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Clergy: jobs and pay since 1870}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/21-2011}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

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17501775180018251850187519001925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Minister / Clergyman / Divine (colonial and early republic era)

Known then as Clergyman / Minister / Pastor (Second Great Awakening and denominational era)

Known then as Clergymen / Protestant Clergyman / Catholic Priest (census-era gendered label)

Known then as Clergy / Minister / Religious Worker (post-ordination-of-women era)

Known then as Clergy (BLS SOC 21-2011)

Known today as Clergy (BLS SOC 21-2011)

Projected to still be called Clergy (BLS SOC 21-2011)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

57K

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$60,810

≈ $59,251 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1808

Andover Theological Seminary opens in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1808, the first graduate-level theological seminary in the United States. Founded by Calvinist Congregationalists as a counterweight to Unitarian influence at Harvard, Andover established the pattern of post-baccalaureate professional formation for Protestant ministers that eventually spread across all mainline denominations. Before Andover, most clergy learned their trade through an apprenticeship under a settled pastor or through college-level classical education that embedded some theology. The seminary model professionalized entry: a graduate degree became the expected credential for an ordained minister in mainstream Protestant denominations.

Beat · 1844

The Methodist Episcopal Church employs approximately 4,000 itinerant circuit preachers by 1844, making it the largest organized employer of active clergy in the United States and the backbone of the Second Great Awakening's evangelism in frontier states. Methodist growth in the first half of the 19th century was the fastest of any denomination in American history: from fewer than 1,000 members at the end of the 18th century to constituting 34 percent of all American church membership by the mid-19th century. This expansion was staffed not by seminary graduates but by farmer-preachers and tradespeople who received a license to preach after demonstrating doctrinal competence, transforming the socioeconomic profile of the American clergy.

Beat · 1924

Aimee Semple McPherson opens KFSG (Kall Four Square Gospel) in Los Angeles in February 1924, becoming the first woman to obtain an FCC broadcast license and the founder of the first purpose-built Christian radio station in the United States. McPherson's Angelus Temple seated 5,300 people and was, at the time of its 1923 dedication, one of the largest church buildings in the country. Her combination of theatrical staging, music, and radio reach prefigured the audiovisual production values that megachurch ministry would later normalize. McPherson's model demonstrated that mass-media reach and physical congregation could reinforce rather than substitute for each other.

Beat · 1956

The Methodist General Conference, meeting in Minneapolis on May 4, 1956, votes to grant women full clergy rights in the Methodist Church, including ordination, guaranteed appointment to a congregation, and inclusion in the pension plan. This was the first action by a major American denomination to open ordination to women on fully equal terms. The Presbyterian Church (USA) followed, permitting women's ordination in 1955 and seeing Rachel Henderlite become the first ordained woman in 1965. Maude Jensen became the first woman admitted to full Annual Conference membership in Methodism following the 1956 vote. These decisions began a slow but significant demographic diversification of the clergy workforce; by 2025, an estimated 23.7 percent of all US clergy were women, the highest level ever recorded.

Beat · 2000

The number of megachurches in the United States reaches at least 600 by 2000, doubling from approximately 310 in 1990. Between 2000 and 2005, the number would double again to approximately 1,310, with average congregation size increasing by 47 percent. The megachurch growth of the 1990s and 2000s created a bifurcated pastoral labor market: a large number of solo pastors leading very small congregations on modest compensation, and a smaller but growing number of senior and associate pastors in large organizations employing professional staff, children's ministers, worship directors, and small group coordinators. By 2000, the Hartford Institute for Religion Research estimated that megachurches drew nearly 5 million attenders weekly, roughly 10 percent of total US Protestant church attendance from about 0.03 percent of Protestant congregations.

Beat · 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic forced virtually every congregation in the United States to shift to online-only worship between March and May 2020, compressing years of digital adoption into weeks. The experience permanently altered the technology expectations for clergy: live streaming, video production, social media management, and online pastoral care became baseline skills rather than optional extras. Studies conducted in 2020 and 2021 found that congregations that had invested in digital infrastructure before the pandemic retained more members and gave more during lockdowns than those that had not. COVID also accelerated the "none" trend: surveys in 2020 and 2021 found the highest-ever rates of religious non-affiliation among Americans under 40, adding long-term structural pressure to the clergy employment base in mainline Protestant and Catholic settings.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures, ONS ASHE figures (UK pay and jobs) and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1750

The American clergy as a distinct, recognized occupational class took shape in the mid-eighteenth century, when the thirteen colonies had enough denominational infrastructure to support a professional ministry operating alongside, rather than as a branch of, the civil government. The figure of the colonial pastor was already economically and socially distinct: supported by a congregation's tithe or a salary drawn from a provincial establishment, educated at one of the new colleges (Harvard had been founded to train ministers in 1636; Yale followed in 1701; Princeton in 1746), and expected to fill roles that today would be split across at least four separate professions: teacher, counselor, record-keeper (baptisms, marriages, deaths), and community leader. The variety of denominational traditions present by 1750, from New England Congregationalism and Anglican establishments in Virginia to Quaker communities in Pennsylvania and Lutheran congregations in German-speaking settlements, meant that no single definition of the role applied across the colonies. What they shared was a model of intentional occupational formation: entry required literacy, often a college degree, and an act of recognition by a credentialing body (a presbytery, a bishop, a congregation). When the Second Great Awakening swept the young nation from the 1790s through the 1840s, Methodist circuit riders and Baptist farmer-preachers challenged the educated-ministry model and drew millions of converts through camp meetings and frontier preaching, but even this populist wave produced its own credential: the licensed preacher or ordained elder. By the time the federal government began recording occupations in the decennial census of 1850, "clergyman" was a recognized and enumerable category, one of the few professional occupations the antebellum census could count with reasonable confidence.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace clergy? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
Target year 2035
+2.4%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 21-2011 (Clergy): 242.0 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 247.8 thousand in 2035, a change of +5.7 thousand (+2.4%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (5.7% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
23.8%
of tasks
What this measures
Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 21-2011.00 Clergy. Shown: human-rated β = 0.238, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.19 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.286; GPT-4-rated β 0.333. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.
Official statisticReport an error
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
0.0081
probability
What this measures
Published appendix value for SOC 2010 21-2011 Clergy: probability of computerisation 0.0081, rank 42 of 702 (rank 1 is least computerisable). Frey and Osborne estimated in 2013, with a Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET variables, how likely the whole occupation is to be technically automatable over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two". It is a probability for the occupation, not a share of tasks and not a forecast of jobs lost.
Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for clergy

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you here Pray and promote spirituality

Sources^[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you here Prepare and deliver sermons or other talks

Sources^[2]

Where your edge is

AI is sitting alongside you here Share information about religious issues by writing articles…

, giving speeches, or teaching.^[2]

Where your edge is

Tools of the era

How has the work of clergy changed since 1750?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Print sermon and handwritten letter (pre-print mass era)
Before the mass printing press arrived in American religious life, the colonial minister's primary tools were the manuscript sermon, the handwritten letter of correspondence with ecclesiastical superiors and peers, and the bound Bible. Sermon preparation was a significant scholarly labor: an educated minister was expected to produce a substantial weekly discourse grounded in Greek and Hebrew texts and patristic commentary. The colonial pastor's library was often the largest private book collection in a rural community, and lending books was a recognized pastoral duty alongside preaching, counseling, and sacramental rites.
Steam press, denominational periodicals, and circuit-preaching infrastructure
The steam-powered printing press transformed how clergy reached believers beyond their immediate congregation. Beginning in 1815, the American Bible Society used steam presses and machine-made paper to distribute Bibles on a previously impossible scale. Denominational newspapers (the Methodist Christian Advocate, founded 1826) gave clergy a mass-communication channel for doctrinal guidance and debate. The Second Great Awakening also produced a new labor model: the Methodist circuit rider, who covered a geographic territory of dozens of scattered congregations on horseback, conducting worship, baptisms, and pastoral visits on a rotating schedule. By 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church employed thousands of itinerant preachers serving circuits across the frontier states.
Effect on the work
The circuit-rider model allowed one ordained minister to serve congregations that previously had none, dramatically extending the reach of formal clergy without equivalent growth in the ordained workforce. It also created a two-tier labor market within the clergy: settled pastors with a stable salary and parsonage, and itinerant preachers whose compensation was subsistence-level.
Radio broadcasting (KFSG Los Angeles, 1924; CBS Church of the Air, 1931)
Aimee Semple McPherson opened KFSG (Kall Four Square Gospel) in February 1924 in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to receive an FCC license and the first Christian broadcaster to build a purpose-dedicated religious radio station. Father Charles Coughlin began broadcasting on CBS in 1930, reaching tens of millions of listeners per week by the mid-1930s. Radio transformed pastoral reach without eliminating the local pastor: a congregation could now hear a national voice as a supplement to their own minister, but baptisms, weddings, funerals, and weekly pastoral counsel still required local clergy. CBS's response to controversies around paid religious broadcasting, replacing it with "Church of the Air" offering free rotating time to speakers from major faiths, institutionalized a distinction between broadcast religious content and local pastoral ministry that persists to this day.
Effect on the work
Religious radio created a celebrity-pastor tier within the clergy workforce: a small number of nationally broadcast ministers accumulated enormous congregations and influence. This concentration did not significantly reduce local clergy employment, because broadcast content cannot administer sacraments or provide community care.
Television, televangelism, and megachurch audiovisual production
Television evangelism produced a second wave of national clergy celebrity: Billy Graham's crusades drew millions of television viewers from the 1950s through the 1990s; Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson built media empires in the 1970s and 1980s. Megachurches invested heavily in audiovisual production infrastructure: large-screen video projection, professional sound systems, recorded sermon libraries, and eventually satellite campus broadcasts. The senior pastor of a megachurch became a CEO-scale role requiring management skills that traditional pastoral training did not provide.
Effect on the work
Megachurch growth concentrated pastoral authority in a few senior figures while creating demand for specialized support clergy (associate pastors, children's ministers, worship leaders) that broadened the overall clergy employment base.
Church management software, livestreaming, and online sermons (Planning Center, YouTube)
The web transformed how congregations organized themselves and how sermons reached beyond the Sunday morning physical gathering. Planning Center Online (founded 2006) became the dominant church scheduling and volunteer management platform for mid-size and large Protestant congregations. YouTube (2005) and later podcast platforms let any pastor distribute sermon recordings globally at zero marginal cost. Clergy began managing not just a weekly service but a digital presence: a church website, a social media account, a sermon podcast, and eventually a livestream. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 compressed years of digital transition into weeks, as virtually every congregation that could shifted to online-only worship between March and May 2020, making digital production skills an overnight necessity for working clergy.
Effect on the work
Livestreaming and digital sermon libraries allowed small congregations to maintain continuity during pastor vacancies or illness, slightly reducing the urgency of filling every pastoral position immediately. The larger effect was a new administrative burden on existing clergy: managing digital platforms added hours to the weekly workload.
AI writing and research assistants (ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot, Grammarly)
The 2025 State of AI in the Church Survey (AiForChurchLeaders.com / Exponential AI NEXT, n=594 pastors and church staff) found that 61 percent of pastors use AI tools weekly or daily. ChatGPT is the most widely used tool (26 percent of respondents), followed by Grammarly and Microsoft Co-Pilot. Primary applications are administrative work, communications drafting, and sermon research: clergy use AI to find background context on biblical texts, generate initial outlines, and polish written materials. Theological accuracy and the risk of misinformation are the primary concerns.
Effect on the work
AI tools are reducing the administrative and research burden on solo and bivocational clergy, making it more feasible to run a small congregation without full-time administrative support. Whether AI-assisted sermon preparation will change the quality threshold that congregations expect, and thereby affect employment levels, is an open question as of 2026.

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Clergy employment and pay by year

On record since1750

Latest US employment57,200 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$60,810 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+2.4% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Clergy in the US: employment and pay by year, with sources
Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1870	43,000	n/a	Decennial Census 1870 [1] Researched context	Report
1900	111,000	n/a	Decennial Census 1900 [2] Researched context	Report
1940	141,000	n/a	Decennial Census 1940 [3] Researched context	Report
1960	200,000	n/a	Decennial Census 1960 [4] Researched context	Report
1990	302,000	n/a	Decennial Census 1990 [5] Researched context	Report
2003	38,170	$33,800	BLS OEWS May 2003 [6] Official statistic	Report
2004	35,790	$36,690	BLS OEWS May 2004 [6] Official statistic	Report
2005	36,590	$38,540	BLS OEWS May 2005 [6] Official statistic	Report
2006	37,820	$39,680	BLS OEWS May 2006 [6] Official statistic	Report
2007	40,960	$40,460	BLS OEWS May 2007 [6] Official statistic	Report
2008	42,040	$41,730	BLS OEWS May 2008 [6] Official statistic	Report
2009	42,670	$42,950	BLS OEWS May 2009 [6] Official statistic	Report
2010	42,820	$43,970	BLS OEWS May 2010 [6] Official statistic	Report
2011	42,560	$44,140	BLS OEWS May 2011 [6] Official statistic	Report
2012	44,000	$44,060	BLS OEWS May 2012 [6] Official statistic	Report
2013	45,020	$43,800	BLS OEWS May 2013 [6] Official statistic	Report
2014	46,510	$43,950	BLS OEWS May 2014 [6] Official statistic	Report
2015	48,250	$44,250	BLS OEWS May 2015 [6] Official statistic	Report
2016	49,320	$45,740	BLS OEWS May 2016 [6] Official statistic	Report
2017	49,850	$47,100	BLS OEWS May 2017 [6] Official statistic	Report
2018	50,960	$48,990	BLS OEWS May 2018 [6] Official statistic	Report
2019	53,180	$50,400	BLS OEWS May 2019 [6] Official statistic	Report
2020	52,260	$51,940	BLS OEWS May 2020 [6] Official statistic	Report
2021	50,790	$49,720	BLS OEWS May 2021 [6] Official statistic	Report
2022	53,140	$55,550	BLS OEWS May 2022 [6] Official statistic	Report
2023	56,640	$58,920	BLS OEWS May 2023 [6] Official statistic	Report
2024	58,080	$60,820	BLS OEWS May 2024 [6] Official statistic	Report
2025	57,200	$60,810	BLS OEWS May 2025 [6] Official statistic	Report

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See all roles in Social Services

Print sermon and handwritten letter (pre-print mass era) (1750 to 1820)

Steam press, denominational periodicals, and circuit-preaching infrastructure (1820 to 1920)

Radio broadcasting (KFSG Los Angeles, 1924; CBS Church of the Air, 1931) (1920 to 1960)

Television, televangelism, and megachurch audiovisual production (1960 to 1995)

Church management software, livestreaming, and online sermons (Planning Center, YouTube) (1995 to 2020)

AI writing and research assistants (ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot, Grammarly) (2023 to present)

Clergy employment and pay by year

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