What can you do with a communication disorders degree?
Where communication disorders graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 14,571 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Communication disorders is a degree with one clear main destination. About 39 in 100 people with a communication disorders sciences degree work as speech-language pathologists, and another 4 in 100 are audiologists. Smaller groups work as elementary or middle school teachers, registered nurses and special education teachers, at roughly 2 to 4 in 100 each.
Nearly a third of graduates, about 31 in 100, work in roles we do not score, led by physicians at about 2 in 100, postsecondary teaching and health services management. The figures come from Census data on about 14,600 people with this degree, matched to the occupation pages on this site, and cover about 69% of graduates.
How exposed are communication disorders jobs to AI?
Speech-language pathology is by far the largest destination for this degree, and we rate it AI-resistant despite the paperwork even though its structural exposure is high, about 78 out of 100. Clinical swallowing assessment needs hands-on physical examination that no current AI tool performs, and licensing rules restrict diagnosis and treatment planning to licensed pathologists. Audiologists, the next group, carry the same label because their core tasks are in-person procedures.
We hold medium confidence because the licensing policy our research relied on is a few years old and about 31% of graduates work in roles we do not score.
These figures cover the 69% of communication disorders graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 31% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Physicians; Postsecondary Teachers; Medical and Health Services Managers). Signal 01 averages each job's own structural exposure, weighted by how many graduates work there; it describes tasks, not whether jobs will disappear.
Where communication disorders graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 59% of communication disorders graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
Careers next door to communication disorders, least exposed first
Curated related careers of the main occupations above, ranked by structural exposure (lowest first), so you can see which neighboring routes are less and more exposed.
What the research says about AI and communication disorders graduates
The Census Bureau working paper (September 2026) rates communication disorders sciences among its lower-exposure majors, with 2024 employment and earnings results above the average major's, and finds its sharpest declines in software-related degrees. The paper's table gives the field an exposure score about 0. 8 standard deviations below the average major, on about 21,500 graduates from 2018 to 2022.
The studies disagree about how much of any graduate weakness is due to AI, and the Census paper reports outcomes by field of degree, not for speech-language pathologists as a profession.
Read the full evidence review: what the studies say about AI and graduate jobs →
Degrees whose graduates work in similar jobs
How this page was built
Graduate shares come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS), field of degree "Communication Disorders Sciences And Services" (code 6102), weighted to the population. Each occupation we cover is scored with the numbers already published on its own page on this site, then averaged by graduate share. Occupations without a page are shown but never scored. Graduates aged 22-64 are included, so the mix reflects the whole working-age group, not only recent graduates. Sources: www2.census.gov, www.bls.gov. This page is general information, not career or educational advice.