Philosophers, historians and political scientists
A substantial share of tasks can be sped up or taken over by AI. The content of the job will noticeably change — learning is cheapest now.
Exposure is not job loss: it shows how much of the work generative AI could do today. Whether that turns into transformation, productivity gains or cuts depends on employers, regulation — and on you.
0 = today’s generative AI cannot perform any of the job’s tasks, 100 = it could do all of them fully. The pale band is the spread across tasks.
Work out your own score ↓What can you do?
🤖 Written with AIThis text was written by artificial intelligence from the data points shown; it is built on verified figures but may contain mistakes.· 13/10/2026How is it made?
Exposure score 47/100 signals substantial task support, not job loss. The broader professional group is forecast to grow 5.3% by 2035, alongside 1,872,000 replacement openings.
What changes
- Extracting, authenticating and synthesizing evidence from primary and secondary historical sources
- Drafting scholarly papers, policy reports, findings and publication-ready conclusions
- Comparing political theories, institutions and datasets to identify patterns and competing interpretations
What stays human
- Judging source authenticity, context, bias and significance when evidence remains incomplete
- Developing original philosophical arguments and defensible interpretations of historical or political events
- Building trust during interviews with officials, communities and politically sensitive sources
What to learn
- Learn AI-assisted archival search, citation verification and systematic source comparison
- Strengthen qualitative interviewing, oral-history methods and research ethics
- Practice auditing generated arguments for fabricated evidence, hidden assumptions and political bias
Task by task
The ILO scored every task of the occupation separately, as the average of two AI models (GPT-4o and Gemini). The pale band is the range between the two models' scores, the dot the ILO's final score (for a few tasks expert review placed it outside the band).
- Extracting relevant material, checking its authenticity, and researching into and describing the history of a particular period, country or region, or a particular facet - for example economic, social or political - of its history54
- Presenting findings and conclusions for publication or use by government, political parties or other organizations and interested persons54
- Preparing scholarly papers and reports.53
- Consulting and comparing primary sources, such as original or contemporary records of past events, and secondary sources such as archaeological or anthropological findings51
- Conducting research in such fields as political philosophy, or past and present theory and practice of political systems, institutions or behaviour47
- Observing contemporary political institutions and opinions, collecting data on them from various sources, including interviews with government and political party officials and other relevant persons42
- Developing theories, models and methods to interpret and describe the nature of human experience and historical and political events and behaviour42
- Researching, mostly by reasoning, into the general causes, principles and meanings of the world, human actions, experience and existence, and interpreting and developing philosophical concepts and theories37
How much does it affect you?
Every job is different: mark which of these tasks you do and how much, and we'll compute your own, time-weighted score.
For each task: I don't do it · sometimes · most of my job.
- Extracting relevant material, checking its authenticity, and researching into and describing the history of a particular period, country or region, or a particular facet - for example economic, social or political - of its history(54)
- Presenting findings and conclusions for publication or use by government, political parties or other organizations and interested persons(54)
- Preparing scholarly papers and reports.(53)
- Consulting and comparing primary sources, such as original or contemporary records of past events, and secondary sources such as archaeological or anthropological findings(51)
- Conducting research in such fields as political philosophy, or past and present theory and practice of political systems, institutions or behaviour(47)
- Observing contemporary political institutions and opinions, collecting data on them from various sources, including interviews with government and political party officials and other relevant persons(42)
- Developing theories, models and methods to interpret and describe the nature of human experience and historical and political events and behaviour(42)
- Researching, mostly by reasoning, into the general causes, principles and meanings of the world, human actions, experience and existence, and interpreting and developing philosophical concepts and theories(37)
You are exactly at the occupation average. (The occupation's score: 47.)
About 50% of your working time goes to highly exposed tasks (score ≥ 50).
- • Extracting relevant material, checking its authenticity, and researching into and describing the history of a particular period, country or region, or a particular facet - for example economic, social or political - of its history
- • Presenting findings and conclusions for publication or use by government, political parties or other organizations and interested persons
- • Researching, mostly by reasoning, into the general causes, principles and meanings of the world, human actions, experience and existence, and interpreting and developing philosophical concepts and theories
- • Developing theories, models and methods to interpret and describe the nature of human experience and historical and political events and behaviour
An estimate from the ILO task scores. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing is sent or stored.
How many people work in this occupational group?
Share of the Legal, social and cultural professionals group in total employment, by country (Eurostat, ISCO 2-digit — 4-digit breakdowns are not public by country).
Table view
| Country | Legal, social and cultural professionals |
|---|---|
| Luxembourg | 9.6% · 32 thousand · 2025 |
| Netherlands | 4.5% · 444 thousand · 2025 |
| Sweden | 4.3% · 227 thousand · 2025 |
| Croatia | 4.1% · 70 thousand · 2025 |
| Belgium | 3.8% · 197 thousand · 2025 |
| Denmark | 3.6% · 109 thousand · 2025 |
| Greece | 3.5% · 153 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovenia | 3.5% · 35 thousand · 2025 |
| Norway | 3.4% · 99 thousand · 2025 |
| United Kingdom | 3.4% · 1,162 thousand · 2025 |
| Lithuania | 3.3% · 49 thousand · 2025 |
| Germany | 3.3% · 1,412 thousand · 2025 |
| Finland | 3.3% · 86 thousand · 2025 |
| Hungary | 3.3% · 154 thousand · 2025 |
| France | 3.3% · 964 thousand · 2025 |
| Austria | 3.2% · 146 thousand · 2025 |
| Switzerland | 3.2% · 156 thousand · 2025 |
| Cyprus | 3.1% · 16 thousand · 2025 |
| Iceland | 3.1% · 7 thousand · 2025 |
| Spain | 3.1% · 695 thousand · 2025 |
| Estonia | 3.1% · 21 thousand · 2025 |
| Bulgaria | 3.1% · 90 thousand · 2025 |
| Portugal | 2.9% · 153 thousand · 2025 |
| Slovakia | 2.7% · 72 thousand · 2025 |
| Czechia | 2.6% · 136 thousand · 2025 |
| Italy | 2.5% · 601 thousand · 2025 |
| Latvia | 2.5% · 22 thousand · 2025 |
| Ireland | 2.4% · 68 thousand · 2025 |
| Poland | 2.2% · 386 thousand · 2025 |
| Malta | 1.9% · 6 thousand · 2025 |
| Romania | 1.9% · 147 thousand · 2025 |
What do they earn?
Mean gross monthly earnings in the major occupational group (Professionals). Eurostat's earnings survey only publishes pay by occupation at 1 digit, so this is the job's broader group. Enterprises with 10+ employees, 2022.
By country, at purchasing power parity (PPS/month), so countries with different price levels can be compared.
- Switzerland6,389
- Luxembourg5,274
- Ireland4,873
- Germany4,807
- Belgium4,799
- Denmark4,446
- Norway4,237
- Austria4,099
- Netherlands4,031
- Iceland3,875
- EU273,850
- France3,791
- Finland3,769
- Romania3,559
- Sweden3,416
- Spain3,413
- Slovenia3,326
- Italy3,305
- Cyprus3,271
- Lithuania3,221
- Croatia2,890
- Czechia2,871
- Malta2,825
- Poland2,783
- Hungary2,777
- Portugal2,755
- Latvia2,671
- Estonia2,599
- Bulgaria2,359
- Slovakia2,345
- Greece2,321
Source: Eurostat Structure of Earnings Survey (earn_ses22_21), every four years. The United Kingdom is not covered by the survey.
Outlook to 2035
Employment in the Legal, social and cultural professionals group according to Cedefop's 2026 forecast.
thousand · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · 2026–2035: projection
Replacement demand is the jobs left by people retiring or changing careers — even a shrinking occupation can have many openings.
Related occupations
Sources: ILO WP140 (2025) · Eurostat lfsa_egai2d · Cedefop Skills Forecast 2026 · WEF Future of Jobs 2025 · ESCO. The exposure score measures how much of an occupation's tasks generative AI could perform — not whether the job disappears. For information only, not career advice. How do we calculate this?