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Secretaries and admin assistants

Official title Secretaries and Administrative Assistants (SOC 43-6014)

Also called Administrative assistant, Secretary, Office administrator, Administrative coordinator, Office coordinator

In brief

In 1970 the Census counted 3.9 million stenographers, typists and secretaries combined. In May 2025, BLS counted 1.7 million in the narrower secretaries and administrative assistants group. Median pay was $47,540 a year in May 2025. Of the BLS counts since 2012, the highest was 2,295,510, in May 2016. The last full technology era for secretaries and admin assistants: AI scheduling assistants, 2014 to 2022.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to decline 6% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

  • 46% of work tasks in office and administrative support occupations, this job's group, are exposed to automation by AI. Not a forecast of job losses. Goldman Sachs, 2023
  • 56.7% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
  • 0.96 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

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.96. BLS counted 2,159,000 of these jobs in May 2013 and 1,706,790 in May 2025 (-21%, a change derived by Future History).

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). Secretaries and admin assistants: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-6014

Chicago

Future History. "Secretaries and admin assistants: jobs and pay since 1900." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-6014.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_43_6014, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Secretaries and admin assistants: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/43-6014}}, 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
187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Stenographer / Typewriter (operator)
Known then as Stenographer-Typist / Secretary
Known then as Secretary
Known then as Administrative Assistant
Known today as Administrative Assistant
Projected to still be called Administrative Assistant
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
1.71M

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$47,540

≈ $46,321 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1862

US Treasurer Francis E. Spinner hires the first women into federal clerical roles during the Civil War, having concluded female labor was both cheaper and (in his words) more accurate at sorting Treasury notes. Opens the door to clerical work as women's work.

Beat · 1870

Pitman shorthand school opens in the US (initially male-only). Combined with the typewriter four years later, seeds the modern profession.

Beat · 1910

Women now ~77% of stenographers and typists. Commercial schools proliferate (~500 by 1900) training women in shorthand+typing as a pink-collar entry to white-collar work.

Beat · 1940

40% of 485 US firms surveyed have explicit "marriage bars": they will not employ married women. Many secretaries fired upon marriage.

Beat · 1942

National Secretaries Association founded in Kansas City (becomes Professional Secretaries International in 1982, then International Association of Administrative Professionals in 1998).

Beat · 1951

First Certified Professional Secretary (CPS) exam administered. The first standardized credential for the role.

Beat · 1952

National Secretaries Day (later Administrative Professionals Day) established jointly by the NSA, Dictaphone, and PR man Harry Klemfuss.

Beat · 2000

2000 SOC formally splits the family into 43-6011 (Executive), 43-6012 (Legal), 43-6013 (Medical), 43-6014 (everyone else). Prior unified series is no longer directly comparable.

Beat · 2000

The Census Bureau counts over 2.4 million women working full-time, year-round as secretaries and administrative assistants in 2000, falling to 2.0 million by 2019. That count covers women only, full-time year-round workers only, and the whole secretary family (executive, legal and medical secretaries included), so it is not plotted as a count of this occupation.

Beat · 2019

Real wages for secretaries have been flat (~$40,000 in 2019 dollars) from 2000 to 2019: two decades with no real income growth, even before the AI wave.

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 secretaries and admin assistants? 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
-6%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 43-6014 (Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive): 1,889.8 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 1,775.7 thousand in 2035, a change of -114.1 thousand (-6.0%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (1.5% 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.
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
96%
probability
What this measures

Published appendix value for SOC 2010 43-6014 Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive: probability of computerisation 0.96, rank 634 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
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
56.7%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 43-6014.00 Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive. Shown: human-rated β = 0.567, 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) 0.365 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.769; GPT-4-rated β 0.644. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Goldman Sachs (Briggs & Kodnani, 2023), "The Potentially Large Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Economic Growth"
2023 study · Share of work tasks exposed to automation by AI, all office and administrative support occupations (US)
46%
of tasks
What this measures

Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research scored the task content of each US occupation for exposure to automation by generative AI and weighted by OEWS employment. Exhibit 5 (US panel) reports 46% for office and administrative support occupations, the occupational group this role belongs to; the report publishes no figure for individual occupations. It measures how much of the group's work AI could automate, not how many jobs disappear, and it is a 2023 estimate, not a forecast for a later year.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for secretaries and admin assistants

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

AI is sitting alongside you hereDraft, route, and manage high-volume email correspondence: use Copilot in Outlook to generate context-aware draft replies from brief instructions, apply tone coaching, summarize long threads before responding, and schedule follow-up actions -- then review and personalize AI drafts before sending.

Draft, route, and manage high-volume email correspondence: use Copilot in Outlook to generate context-aware draft replies from brief instructions, apply tone coaching, summarize long threads before responding, and schedule follow-up actions -- then review and personalize AI drafts before sending.[1],[9],[6]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Treat Copilot as a first-draft engine, not an autonomous sender. Audit its tone suggestions for organizational culture fit, add relationship context the AI cannot know (e.g., this stakeholder prefers brevity; that vendor needs extra reassurance), and build a personal prompt library for recurring message types so output quality compounds over time.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCoordinate calendars for multiple stakeholders: use AI scheduling tools (Reclaim, Copilot Scheduled Prompts) to surface optimal meeting times, protect focus blocks, auto-reschedule conflicts, and manage travel buffers -- then configure priority rules and review edge cases the AI escalates.

Coordinate calendars for multiple stakeholders: use AI scheduling tools (Reclaim, Copilot Scheduled Prompts) to surface optimal meeting times, protect focus blocks, auto-reschedule conflicts, and manage travel buffers -- then configure priority rules and review edge cases the AI escalates.[7],[10],[1]

Where your edge is

Learn to configure Reclaim priority weights and Copilot scheduling policies rather than treating them as black boxes. Admins who understand how the AI resolves conflicts become the system owners -- a role computers cannot fill -- while basic scheduling coordination becomes fully automated.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMaintain organizational records and databases: configure Zapier automation to route form submissions, inbound emails, and spreadsheet updates into the correct database fields automatically

Maintain organizational records and databases: configure Zapier automation to route form submissions, inbound emails, and spreadsheet updates into the correct database fields automatically; audit automated entries for errors; manage access permissions; and handle records requests that fall outside automated rules.[11],[1]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Learn to build and maintain Zapier "Zaps" and Power Automate flows for common data-routing tasks (form-to-spreadsheet, email-to-CRM, approval notifications). Each workflow you automate frees hours per week and demonstrates the operations fluency that opens career paths to operations coordinator roles.

Where secretaries and admin assistants go next

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

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Administrative Services Managers

Administrative assistants who learn to configure and govern AI automation tools are already doing the work of an administrative services manager: designing workflows, overseeing records systems, and coordinating across teams. Organizations replacing admin headcount with AI agents still need a human to own those systems, audit their output, and manage vendors. Admins with demonstrated automation skills can move into manager roles without a degree by building a portfolio of workflows they have designed and maintained.

What you'd add
  • · No-code automation ownership: Zapier Certified Expert path or Microsoft Power Automate fundamentals
  • · Budget and vendor management basics: negotiating SaaS contracts, tracking departmental spend
  • · Staff supervision: performance feedback, delegation, onboarding documentation
  • · Records governance and compliance: data retention policies, GDPR/CCPA basics for office records
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of secretaries and admin assistants changed since 1874?

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

  • Mechanical typewriter

    Sholes & Glidden / Remington introduced the first commercial typewriter. Within 30 years the typing-pool was the default architecture of every office and the role had been almost entirely feminized.

    Effect on the work

    1880 → 1910: stenographer/typist headcount grew from 154 to 112,600 in the US.

  • Dictaphone

    Wax-cylinder, then magnetic-tape dictation decoupled an executive's speaking from a secretary's typing. The transcription role consolidated with typing into the modern "secretary" job.

  • Xerox 914 photocopier

    The first plain-paper office copier. Eliminated carbon paper, mimeograph, and the multi-hour-per-day copying task that had been a core secretarial workload.

    Effect on the work

    Xerox 914 generated 2/3 of Xerox's $243M revenue by 1965: adoption was near-universal in the early 1960s.

  • IBM MT/ST

    The Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter, first commercial device marketed as a "word processor". Made it possible to edit text without retyping the entire document. Coined the term "word processing".

  • Wang Word Processing System

    Dedicated CRT-screen word-processing terminals. By 1978 Wang was the largest worldwide WP supplier; 80% of the 2,000 largest US firms used Wang equipment by the early 1980s.

    Effect on the work

    First wave where office productivity tech was explicitly framed as "how to need fewer secretaries". Typing pools began shrinking.

  • Microsoft Word + WordPerfect on PC

    Word processing moved off dedicated machines onto general-purpose PCs. Pushed typing onto knowledge workers themselves: secretaries no longer typed managers' first drafts.

  • Microsoft Outlook + corporate email

    Email + integrated calendar + contacts. Eliminated message-routing as a secretarial task. Calendars still mostly secretary-managed at this point.

  • Google Calendar + cloud-shared scheduling

    First mass-market shared-calendar product. Tipped self-service scheduling out of the secretary's queue: executives started booking each other directly.

  • AI scheduling assistants (Clara, x.ai Amy)

    First commercial software products explicitly pitched as "replacing an executive assistant" for the scheduling subtask. Adoption was real but limited; Clara was acquired by Teamable in 2019, not a market-redefining success.

  • LLMs in-line in the office suite (MS 365 Copilot, Gemini for Workspace)

    Generative AI embedded directly in Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams (Copilot, GA Nov 2023, $30/user/mo) and Google Docs/Sheets/Gmail (Gemini, broadly available 2024, $14/user/mo). Drafts replies, summarizes threads, generates documents: direct overlap with the drafting + summary loop that defines admin work.

    Effect on the work

    In November 2025 the Anthropic Economic Index matched 13% of sampled first-party Claude API transcripts to Office and Administrative Support tasks. That shows what businesses sent to Claude, not how many administrative jobs were gained or lost.

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Secretaries and Administrative Assistants employment and pay by year

On record since1874
Latest US employment1,706,790 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$47,540 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook-6% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

  • Canada (NOC 13110)

    Employment, 2020
    264,150, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 13110 Administrative assistants, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
    Median pay, 2020
    C$48,800, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 13110 Administrative assistants, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.

  • United Kingdom (UK SOC 4215)

    Employment, 2025
    164,000, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14): employee jobs in SOC 4215 Personal assistants and other secretaries, United Kingdom, 2025 (ASHE "number of jobs", thousands x1000; excludes self-employment). Open Government Licence v3.0.
    Median pay, 2025
    £25,233, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14.7a): median gross annual pay for all employee jobs in SOC 4215 Personal assistants and other secretaries, United Kingdom, 2025. Open Government Licence v3.0.

  • Australia (ANZSCO 5212)

    Employment, 2025
    30,500, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 5212 Secretaries, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
    Median pay, 2025
    A$84,552, ABS Employee Earnings May 2025 Official statistic Report an errorAnnualised (x52) from A$1,626 median weekly earnings. ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025: median pay for full-time non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate, before tax. Surfaced via the Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile.
View all 34 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
1900134,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
1910387,000$1,156Decennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
1915n/a$1,267BLS historical bulletin 1970 Researched contextReport
1920786,000$2,160Decennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
1925n/a$2,239BLS historical bulletin 1970 Researched contextReport
19301,097,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
19401,223,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
19501,661,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
19602,313,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
19703,914,000n/aDecennial Census 1970 Researched contextReport
1999n/a$26,554Census 2000 Researched contextReport
20031,845,860$25,420BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
20041,743,560$26,110BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
20051,744,380$26,670BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
20061,750,600$27,450BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
20071,832,490$28,220BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
20081,872,070$29,050BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
20091,797,670$29,980BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
20101,841,020$30,830BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
20111,955,570$31,870BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
20122,085,680$32,410BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
20132,159,000$32,840BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
20142,207,220$33,240BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
20152,281,120$33,910BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
20162,295,510$34,820BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
20172,254,820$35,590BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
20182,165,310$36,630BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
20192,038,340$37,690BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
20201,850,360$38,850BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
20211,825,980$37,880BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
20221,826,710$41,000BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
20231,785,430$44,280BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
20241,737,820$46,290BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) Official statisticReport
20251,706,790$47,540BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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