What can you do with an elementary education degree?
Where elementary education graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 75,893 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Elementary education leads mainly to the classroom. About 44 in 100 people with an elementary education bachelor's degree work as elementary or middle school teachers, and a further 6 in 100 teach preschool or kindergarten. Roughly 4 in 100 are education administrators, such as school principals, 4 in 100 teach special education, 3 in 100 teach in secondary schools and 2 in 100 are teaching assistants.
About 13 in 100 work in other roles we do score, such as nursing, childcare and school librarianship. Roughly 24 in 100 work in roles we do not score, with postsecondary teaching, other instruction, administrative support and management each around 1 in 100. Because so many graduates share school-based jobs, the exposure of the degree tracks the exposure of teaching closely.
The figures come from Census data on almost 76,000 people with this degree, matched to the occupation pages on this site, and they cover about 76% of graduates.
How exposed are elementary education jobs to AI?
Most elementary education graduates teach, and elementary teaching rates AI-resistant despite the paperwork on our research. Elementary teachers score about 68 out of 100 on structural exposure. But every US state requires a license to be the teacher of record in a public school, and teachers carry a personal duty to report suspected abuse that cannot be handed to software.
Demand is a separate question: the BLS now projects little or no change (0%) in kindergarten and elementary teacher employment from 2025 to 2035. Our confidence is medium.
These figures cover the 76% of elementary education graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 24% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Postsecondary Teachers; Other Teachers and Instructors; Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical and Executive). 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 elementary education graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 68% of elementary education graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
Careers next door to elementary education, 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 elementary education graduates
The Dallas Fed (September 2026) names education among the least AI-exposed fields, and the Census Bureau working paper (September 2026) rates elementary education among its lowest-exposure majors, with 2024 employment and earnings results above the average major's. The largest declines in that paper are in software-related degrees. The studies disagree about how much of any graduate weakness is due to AI.
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 "Elementary Education" (code 2304), 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.