What can you do with a therapy professions degree?
Where therapy professions graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 22,484 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Treatment Therapy Professions is the Census name for this group of degrees. Graduates most often work as physical and occupational therapists, but those two roles are only about 30 in 100 of them. About 18 in 100 people with this degree work as physical therapists and 12 in 100 as occupational therapists. Another 3 in 100 are physician assistants, 2.5 in 100 are registered nurses and 2 in 100 teach elementary or middle school.
The largest groups we do not score are other healthcare practitioners at about 4 in 100, other therapists at about 3 in 100 and physicians at about 2 in 100. Many graduates work in roles we do not score, so this page covers about 57% of graduates and gives no overall verdict. Compare it with nursing and communication disorders for related health degrees. The figures come from Census data on about 22,500 people.
How exposed are therapy professions jobs to AI?
The two largest groups of therapy graduates, physical therapists and occupational therapists, both rate AI-resistant despite the paperwork on our research. Physical therapy has a real exception: digital platforms such as Hinge Health and Sword Health have already automated most clinician hours for one segment, exercise-based treatment of chronic pain in working-age adults.
But about 43% of graduates work in roles we do not score, including other healthcare practitioners and other therapists, and coverage is only 57%, below our 60% bar for an overall verdict. About 92 in 100 of the graduates we can score work in jobs we rate Safe or AI-resistant despite the paperwork, and about 8 in 100 in jobs rated At risk; the degree as a whole is not judged.
These figures cover the 57% of therapy professions graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 43% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Other Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations; Other Therapists; Physicians). 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 therapy professions graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 51% of therapy professions graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
Careers next door to therapy professions, 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 therapy professions graduates
The Census Bureau working paper (September 2026) rates treatment therapy professions among its lowest-exposure majors, with 2024 employment and earnings results above the average major's, while its sharpest declines are in software-related degrees. The table counts about 52,000 graduates in this field from 2018 to 2022. The studies disagree about how much of any graduate weakness is due to AI, and none of the studies we reviewed reports results for physical or occupational therapists as occupations.
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 "Treatment Therapy Professions" (code 6109), 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.