Bank Teller
Bank Teller is one of the more clearly documented decline stories on this site.
We have not ingested real-world usage data for this occupation yet. We show a band only where genuine data exists, rather than estimate one.
What a bank teller actually does
Bank tellers handle the routine transactions that happen at a bank branch counter: receiving and paying out money, cashing checks, processing deposits and withdrawals, balancing a cash drawer at the start and end of a shift, and keeping accurate records of every transaction that runs through the branch. The job also means examining checks for proper endorsement, resolving small account discrepancies, preparing cashier's checks, and answering routine account questions from customers who come into the branch.
Tellers are often a customer's only in-person point of contact with their bank, and part of the role is spotting something that doesn't look right, an unusual withdrawal pattern, signs of elder fraud, a check that doesn't match its stated payee, and flagging it before a transaction completes. Most positions require only a high school diploma, with the bulk of training happening on the job under a branch manager or senior teller.
Why it reads this way
Bank Teller is one of the more clearly documented decline stories on this site. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists bank tellers and related clerks as the second-fastest-declining role tracked, projecting roughly a 31% decline by 2030, and the driver is well-established: mobile banking, not ATMs, is what actually collapsed teller headcount, since a phone automates the entire trip to a branch rather than just one transaction inside it. The number of U. S.
bank branches per capita has fallen roughly 30% since peaking in 2009, and by 2025 only 9% of bank customers said a branch was their primary banking channel, down from 36% in 2007.
No state license protects this role, and AI's impact is concentrated exactly where the job's routine tasks live: deposit, withdrawal, and transaction-recording work carries very high AI exposure, while the frontline judgment in fraud detection and exception handling remains more resistant, but that judgment work is a shrinking share of what's left of the role as branches close and consolidate.
Industry coverage of 2026 branch banking explicitly describes a future without teller stations, replaced by voice- and touch-enabled machines, with complex advice routed elsewhere.
Skills this role draws on
Range source: BLS OEWS wage data via O*NET OnLine (2025 release), SOC 43-3071.00 'Tellers'
Average source: BLS OEWS wage data for Tellers (43-3071.00) via O*NET OnLine, 2025 wage data (Annual Median Wage)
Safer, skill-adjacent careers
These aren't generic "consider retraining" suggestions. Each one shares real skill or task overlap with bank teller work, and each one scores meaningfully higher on our structural exposure scale, with the reasoning shown below.
A teller already has direct, daily exposure to customers' real financial situations and questions, and a personal financial advisor's fiduciary-duty licensing (Series 65) and ongoing client-advisory relationship is a genuine step up in protection, though it requires real additional exam and credentialing investment.
Both roles center on explaining financial products to customers and building repeat-client relationships, and insurance sales agent's state-issued, line-specific license ties the work to a specific individually-licensed person no AI system can hold, a protection routine teller transactions don't carry.
Bank Teller scores 44/100 (Low structural confidence — AIOE ingestion unavailable during this research pass due to a source-side rate limit), a middling numeric reading that undersells how well-documented the real displacement story is: the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists this occupation among its fastest-declining, projecting roughly -31% by 2030, driven by mobile banking rather than ATMs, since a phone automates the entire branch visit rather than one transaction. U.S. bank branches per capita have fallen ~30% since 2009, and only 9% of customers named a branch their primary channel by 2025, down from 36% in 2007. No state license protects this role. AI exposure concentrates in exactly the routine deposit/withdrawal/transaction-recording tasks that make up most of the job, with fraud-detection and exception-handling judgment more resistant but a shrinking share of the remaining role, as of 2026-08-17.
This is a researched judgment (checklist v1.2), not a statistical measurement — it sits alongside, not instead of, the structural exposure signal above. Next scheduled review: 2027-02-17.
Sources (6)
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/43-3071.00
- https://www.onetonline.org/link/localwages/43-3071.00
- https://www.digitaltoday.co.kr/en/view/78231/mobile-banking-not-atms-behind-drop-in-us-bank-teller-staff
- https://www.aei.org/economics/what-atms-bank-tellers-rise-robots-and-jobs/
- https://aijobimpactcalculator.com/occupations/bank-tellers/
- https://www.prosightfa.org/insights/branch-banking-2026-from-robots-in-the-lobby-to-personal-tellers-on-campus/
Data sources & methodology
Salary data: BLS OEWS wage data via O*NET OnLine (2025 release), SOC 43-3071.00 'Tellers'. Average figure sourced separately: BLS OEWS wage data for Tellers (43-3071.00) via O*NET OnLine, 2025 wage data (Annual Median Wage).
Task descriptions: Based on O*NET occupational analysis (43-3071.00).
Real-world AI usage band: Microsoft's "Working with AI" study of Bing Copilot conversations mapped to O*NET tasks (arXiv 2507.07935), and corroborating data from the Anthropic Economic Index.
Growth projections: -1% or lower (2024-2034), one of the fastest-declining occupations in the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 (roughly -31% projected by 2030), with 29,800 openings still projected from growth and replacement (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook), based on BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.