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Survey and intake interviewers

Official title Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan (SOC 43-4111)

Also called Survey interviewer, Patient access representative, Patient registration specialist, Telephone interviewer, CATI interviewer

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 148,060 US survey and intake interviewers, with median pay of $45,920 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 227,220, in May 2007. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 10,000 from 1940, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for survey and intake interviewers: EHR patient registration workflows, 1995 to 2015.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to decline 10.4% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

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 .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Survey and intake interviewers: jobs and pay since 1940 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4111

Chicago

Future History. "Survey and intake interviewers: jobs and pay since 1940." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4111.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_43_4111, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Survey and intake interviewers: jobs and pay since 1940}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-4111}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
195019752000now
2026
Known then as Field Interviewer / Canvasser (opinion poll and market research era)
Known then as Hospital Admissions Clerk / Patient Registration Clerk (parallel healthcare track)
Known then as Survey Interviewer / Telephone Interviewer / Market Research Interviewer
Known then as Survey Interviewer / Patient Access Representative / CATI Interviewer
Known then as Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan (BLS SOC 43-4111)
Known today as Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan (BLS SOC 43-4111)
Projected to still be called Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan (BLS SOC 43-4111)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
148K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$45,920
Est.

≈ $44,743 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1935

George Gallup founds the American Institute of Public Opinion in Princeton, New Jersey, and conducts the first scientific quota-sampling poll in September 1935. Gallup employs a network of trained field interviewers distributed across US regions, assigned quotas by age, sex, income, and geography. The interviewers are predominantly women working on a per-interview or per-day basis. This marks the emergence of survey interviewing as a distinct, nationally scaled occupation in the United States.

Beat · 1941

Harry Field establishes the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Denver as the first nonprofit public opinion research organization in the world, funded by a $50,000 annual grant from the Field Foundation. NORC begins with approximately 12 interviewers. Within two years, NORC researchers are conducting large-scale wartime surveys, including Samuel Stouffer's landmark study of American GIs that would eventually yield the four-volume "The American Soldier." NORC also conducts the first national survey on race relations in 1942. The organization moves to the University of Chicago in 1947 after Field's death.

Beat · 1965

Congress passes the Social Security Amendments of 1965, creating Medicare and Medicaid. The programs take effect July 1, 1966. Hospitals must now verify insurance eligibility for every Medicare and Medicaid patient -- a structured intake interview function that had not previously been required at this scale. The admissions office shifts from a simple registration desk to a structured data-collection function, and hospitals begin hiring dedicated admissions interviewers to handle the additional intake workload. This is the founding event of the healthcare admissions segment of the modern 43-4111 occupation.

Beat · 1971

Chilton Research Services introduces the first computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system in the United States, presenting survey questions on a computer terminal screen as the interviewer speaks with a respondent by phone. The system enforces skip logic automatically, reducing routing errors, and enters data in real time without a separate keypunch step. CATI will go on to become the dominant methodology for large-scale telephone surveys by the mid-1980s, reshaping the survey interviewer's job from paper-and-pencil fieldwork to keyboard-and-screen telephone center work.

Beat · 1983

The US Census Bureau conducts its first major test of CATI technology as a nonresponse follow-up tool for the National Survey of Natural and Social Scientists and Engineers, involving approximately 7,500 nonrespondents using a minicomputer system supporting up to 30 simultaneous interviewer stations. The test demonstrates CATI's scalability for government survey operations and paves the way for the Census Bureau to implement networked CATI production sites nationwide by the mid-1980s. By 1990, the Current Employment Statistics survey and several BLS surveys are running on CATI infrastructure.

Beat · 1996

Congress passes the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which takes effect in stages through 1997-2003. HIPAA adds mandatory privacy-notice workflows to every patient encounter: admissions interviewers must now obtain signed acknowledgment of the Notice of Privacy Practices as part of every intake. The administrative documentation burden per admission increases. HIPAA also standardizes electronic transaction codes for insurance verification, driving more admissions interviewing functions onto integrated EHR and payer-portal workflows.

Beat · 2018

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) documents that live-interviewer telephone survey response rates have declined from approximately 36% in 1997 to 6% in 2018 -- a collapse of 83% over two decades. The primary drivers are caller-ID screening, the shift of US households from landlines to mobile phones (where cold-calling under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act carries legal restrictions), and respondent fatigue. The response-rate collapse drives commercial survey organizations to reduce live-interviewer programs and shift to online panels, directly contracting the telephone survey interviewing labor market.

Beat · 2026

Gallup publishes research on its own pilot testing of AI-enabled telephone interviewing, reporting tests across more than half a million call attempts in seven languages and four continents. The system can probe and ask follow-up questions -- capabilities beyond earlier interactive voice response technology. Gallup reports that many respondents evaluate the AI survey experience positively and that AI may reduce social desirability bias. The technology is framed by Gallup as a scalability tool to reach underrepresented populations, rather than explicitly as a workforce reduction tool -- but the implication for live interviewer employment in survey research is directionally clear.

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 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.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace survey and intake interviewers? 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
→ 2035
-10.4%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 43-4111 (Interviewers, except eligibility and loan): 153.6 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 137.6 thousand in 2035, a change of -16.0 thousand (-10.4%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.5% 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)
43.1%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 43-4111.00 Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan. Shown: human-rated β = 0.431, 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) 0.31 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.552; GPT-4-rated β 0.672. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for survey and intake interviewers

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

AI is taking this onCode and compile structured interview responses into databases or survey platforms, applying skip-logic rules and category codes to open-ended text.

Code and compile structured interview responses into databases or survey platforms, applying skip-logic rules and category codes to open-ended text.[1],[6]

Where your edge is

Learn to configure thematic-analysis and auto-coding models within Qualtrics or Dovetail rather than manually applying codes to raw transcripts.

AI is taking this onConduct structured telephone or in-person interviews using CATI software, following a scripted questionnaire and capturing responses directly into a survey platform.

Conduct structured telephone or in-person interviews using CATI software, following a scripted questionnaire and capturing responses directly into a survey platform.[1],[7],[8]

Where your edge is

Shift from executing scripted calls to programming adaptive questionnaire logic and quality-reviewing AI-generated transcripts.

AI is taking this onContact and schedule respondents or patients by phone, email, or text, managing appointment logistics and follow-up reminders across a daily call list.

Contact and schedule respondents or patients by phone, email, or text, managing appointment logistics and follow-up reminders across a daily call list.[8],[1]

Where your edge is

Move from dialing lists to managing AI outreach queues: configure automated reminder sequences and exception-route calls that require a live voice.

Where survey and intake interviewers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

Survey interviewers already gather, code, and review data for research purposes. Stepping up to Market Research Analyst requires learning statistical methods and insight synthesis, but the data-collection foundation transfers directly. The shift moves the worker from executing research to designing and interpreting it.

What you'd add
  • · Descriptive and inferential statistics (t-test, regression)
  • · Survey design and sampling methodology
  • · Data visualization in Tableau or Power BI
  • · Qualtrics or SPSS for quantitative analysis
  • · Business writing for research reports and presentations
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of survey and intake interviewers changed since 1935?

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

  • Paper questionnaire + clipboard (quota sampling field interviewing era)

    The founding generation of survey interviewers worked with printed questionnaires, pencils, and a list of assigned respondents determined by quota: so many men, so many women, so many in a given income bracket, so many in each age group. Gallup's interviewers carried their quota assignments and a scripted questionnaire into neighborhoods and knocked on doors. The skill was social: projecting trustworthiness, managing doorstep reluctance, probing vague answers without leading the respondent, and completing legible paper records that could be mailed back to a tabulation center. The technology was none -- no recording devices (for most surveys), no telephony, no computing. Everything rested on the interviewer's training and judgment in the field.

  • Telephone survey (random sampling via landline, separate from CATI)

    The telephone interview was cheaper, faster, and safer for interviewers. It also changed the social dynamics of the job: the interviewer no longer needed to physically enter communities, manage doorstep body language, or navigate unfamiliar neighborhoods. What replaced those skills was telephone voice technique -- pacing, warmth over wire, handling early hang-ups, probing without visual cues. Three Eras of Survey Research (Groves 2011) marks the 1960s telephone shift as the transformation of survey interviewing from a primarily field-based craft into a primarily phone-based one, with interview centers clustering in low-wage labor markets.

  • Hospital admissions software + insurance verification systems (Medicare/Medicaid era)

    The 1965 passage of Medicare and Medicaid fundamentally expanded the volume of insurance verification, eligibility checking, and patient history intake that hospitals had to conduct per admission. What had been a relatively simple registration desk function became a structured intake interview: the admissions clerk now had to verify primary and secondary insurance coverage, collect patient demographics for billing, obtain consent forms, and document presenting complaint in a format legible to billing coders. Early dedicated admissions systems (paper-based, then minicomputer-based in the 1970s-80s) replaced the freeform registration ledger with structured intake screens. The patient access representative or admissions interviewer emerged as a distinct job title in this period -- a specialized clerical role at the intersection of patient-facing communication and administrative data-entry.

  • CATI -- Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (Chilton Research 1971, Census CATI 1983)

    Computer-assisted telephone interviewing was introduced by Chilton Research Services in 1971, the first system to present questionnaire items on a computer terminal as the interviewer spoke with respondents, branching automatically based on answers. CATI eliminated paper-questionnaire routing errors, enforced skip logic, and allowed real-time data entry without a separate keypunch step. The US Census Bureau tested CATI as a nonresponse follow-up tool for the 1982 National Survey of Natural and Social Scientists and Engineers, with a minicomputer supporting many stations. By 1984, CATI software was documented in the American Statistical Association proceedings as a mainstream methodology. The interviewer's job shifted: from pencil-and-paper to keyboard-and-screen, from routing logic held in memory to logic enforced by software, from mailing paper responses to transmitting digital records. CATI made telephone interviewers much more productive per hour -- and also made it easier for managers to monitor and measure their work, introducing the early form of call-center performance management that would become standard.

    Effect on the work

    CATI centralized the survey interview workforce into dedicated telephone facilities, replacing a dispersed network of community-based field interviewers. Census estimated in 1982 that CATI could reduce nonresponse follow-up costs relative to paper methods. The productivity gain supported larger sample sizes with the same workforce, partially offsetting the headcount effect as telephone survey volumes grew.

  • EHR patient registration workflows (Epic, Cerner pre-admission systems)

    The wide deployment of electronic health record systems in US hospitals through the 1990s and 2000s transformed the patient admissions interviewer's work environment. Epic Systems and Cerner (founded 1979 and 1979 respectively, but reaching wide hospital deployment in the 1990s-2000s) moved patient registration from paper forms and minicomputer screens into integrated workflow systems tied to scheduling, billing, and clinical records. The admissions interviewer now worked within a structured software environment that prompted for each required field, validated insurance numbers in real time against payer databases, and flagged missing or inconsistent information before the patient left the registration desk. HIPAA (1996) added a mandatory privacy-notice workflow to every encounter. The net effect: the job became more standardized, more auditable, and more reliant on system proficiency -- but did not shrink in headcount, as the complexity of insurance verification and payer mix grew faster than the efficiency gains.

  • Declining response rates + web surveys (AAPOR response rate collapse)

    The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) documented the collapse of telephone survey response rates throughout the 2000s and 2010s: response rates for live-interviewer telephone surveys fell to a small fraction of their 2000 level by 2018, driven by caller-ID screening, the shift from landlines to mobile phones (where cold-calling had legal restrictions under the TCPA), and growing respondent fatigue. Survey organizations responded by reducing labor costs: shifting to web-based panels for general consumer research, reducing live-interviewer programs to specialized contexts (low-literacy respondents, complex probing topics, health surveys requiring clinical precision), and outsourcing CATI operations to lower-cost markets. The commercial telephone-survey interviewing segment contracted noticeably through this period.

    Effect on the work

    The collapse of telephone response rates put structural downward pressure on the survey interviewing segment of 43-4111 employment from the late 2000s onward. The healthcare admissions segment, less affected by response-rate dynamics, helped sustain overall occupation headcount through this period.

  • AI voice survey agents (Gallup AI pilot 2026; Miravoice; Qualtrics Experience Agents)

    In early 2026, Gallup published research describing its own pilot testing of AI-enabled telephone interviewing across more than half a million call attempts in seven languages and four continents. The system could probe, ask follow-up questions, and transcribe longer qualitative responses -- capabilities the prior generation of interactive voice response (IVR) technology lacked. Gallup's research found that many respondents evaluated the AI survey experience positively, and that AI may reduce social desirability bias on sensitive questions. Commercial platforms including Miravoice (automated phone surveys in several languages) and Qualtrics Experience Agents offer AI-driven interview automation as a commercial service as of 2025-26. For the survey interviewing segment of 43-4111, these tools represent a direct substitution threat: tasks that previously required a human to manage the conversation in real time are increasingly handled by voice AI at a fraction of the per-interview cost. The healthcare admissions segment faces a parallel development in Epic's Ask Emmie AI chatbot (2025), which handles routine pre-visit intake questions for patients with existing chart data, reducing the volume of human admissions calls for scheduled visits.

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Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan employment and pay by year

On record since1935
Latest US employment148,060 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$45,920 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook-10.4% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
194010,000n/aEst., Roper Center for Public Opinion Research Researched contextReport
196045,000$3,900Est., Groves, R.M. et al (employment) Researched contextEst., US Department of Labor Women's Bureau (pay) Researched contextReport
197580,000n/aEst., Groves, R.M. et al Researched contextReport
2000156,340$20,840BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
2003190,160$22,590BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004193,780$23,670BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005201,790$25,110BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006211,500$26,290BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007227,220$27,320BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008224,690$28,140BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
2009215,930$28,660BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
2010204,730$28,820BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
2011200,150$29,560BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
2012196,660$29,910BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
2013192,360$30,270BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
2014190,710$30,790BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
2015184,050$31,410BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
2016186,030$32,150BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
2017189,600$33,110BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018192,820$34,060BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
2019188,570$34,970BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
2020173,800$36,170BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
2021169,840$37,220BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
2022168,680$38,700BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
2023160,550$40,300BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
2024157,310$43,830BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
2025148,060$45,920BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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