10 Dying Jobs That Are Expected To Disappear Before 2035

With gas prices at an all-time high and inflation continuing to rise, worrying about where you stand financially could have you looking for a new career. But not all jobs are worth the time, stress, and training it takes to switch, especially when changes in today's technology and market might mean certain jobs won't be around 10 years from now.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects the U.S. is going to add 5.2 million jobs by 2034. However, net growth also masks significant displacement concentrated in specific roles driven by AI, automation, and e-commerce. Keep reading for our list of jobs in decline.

Editor's note: All salary data comes from the BLS, unless otherwise stated.

Word processors and typists

Median annual salary: $47,850

Projected 10-year decline: -36%

Along with typing up documents, typists also answer phones, sort the mail, create document filing systems for businesses, and check office documents, memos, and emails for grammatical and typing mistakes.

However, some of these repetitive data entry jobs are being replaced by generative AI models (also known as large language models, or LLMs), while others are still being outsourced overseas. According to the BLS, the 40,000 typists employed in the U.S. today may drop by at least 14,400 individuals by 2034.

Telephone operators

Median annual salary: $38,080

Projected 10-year decline: -27.5%

The days of dialing the operator and requesting a transfer are long past, but there are actually still thousands of phone operators in the United States who help callers reverse charges, bill third parties for calls, and help people call the right party. However, automation, apps, and the ease of searching directories online are gradually making phone operators obsolete.

Switchboard operators, including answering service

Median annual salary: $36,750

Projected 10-year decline: -26.3%

Like phone operators, switchboard operators answer and transfer calls, but they do so for businesses rather than private individuals, at least, they used to. AI assistants and voice technology are likely to contribute to a sharp decline in industry employment by 2034.

Telemarketers

Median annual salary: $36,680

Projected 10-year decline: -22.1%

Have you had a recent uncanny experience of answering a call and not realizing you weren't talking to a real person until you were a few sentences in? If so, you already know why this career field is shrinking. And while it won't be entirely human-free by 2034, telemarketing is certainly going to contain even more automated, computer-generated voices than it does today.

Order clerks

Median annual salary: $41,600

Projected 10-year decline: -17.2%

Ordering materials, scheduling repairs and rentals, and placing or receiving orders over the phone are all easy-to-automate tasks, which makes them prime material for outsourcing overseas or turning over to generative AI models.

File clerks

Median annual salary: $38,130

Projected 10-year decline: -15.9%

File clerks tend to work in government, legal, or physicians' offices where they file a variety of records according to in-house filing systems (typically alphabetical or numerical). As with most other jobs on this list, file clerk duties are repetitive and therefore easy to automate.

Nuclear power reactor operators

Median annual salary: $120,350

Projected 10-year decline: -15.3%

Nuclear reactors are often positioned as the power of the future, but the truth is that jobs in the industry are shrinking. Nuclear energy has declined in the U.S. year over year, and multiple reactors have gone offline since 2021.

Prepress technicians and workers

Median annual salary: $45,070

Projected 10-year decline: -14.6%

As of 2023, there were still over 23,500 individuals working in typesetting, meaning they proofread and format fonts, texts, and pictures prior to printing. But even a surprising increase in print media likely won't be enough to stop those jobs from declining throughout the decade.

Adult basic education, adult secondary education, and ESL instructors

Median annual salary: $59,950

Projected 10-year decline: -13.7%

Adult education teachers help adults learn to read and write. They may also specialize in teaching English as a second language, and they often help their students work towards earning their GEDs. Jobs in this field might be declining for a surprisingly hopeful reason: high school graduation is actually increasing around the country, meaning there are fewer adults who need help learning.

Medical transcriptionists

Median annual salary: $37,550

Projected 10-year decline: -5%

Some doctors still use voice recordings to take notes when seeing patients. Rather than typing these notes up themselves, physicians often save time by giving the job to transcriptionists, including third-party gig workers who work from home rather than on site. However, improved technology means apps are able to transcribe notes with greater accuracy, eliminating the need for fewer live, human transcribers.

Bottom line

If your career is included on the list above, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is, predictably, that you might be out of work within the next decade. The good news is you now have the forewarning you need to get ahead financially in spite of the changing job market.

Plus, it's worth remembering that some of these jobs might rebound: after all, recent research from Gartner suggests that half of all jobs that have been replaced by generative AI may likely be restored to real humans in 2027. There's no harm in being prepared, but remember that the future is never set in stone, and that could include the predictions above.