Attend to children at schools, businesses, private households, and childcare institutions. Perform a variety of tasks, such as dressing, feeding, bathing, and overseeing play.
U.S. Workers
520,180
Median Salary
$32,050
10-Year Growth
-2.9%
Annual Openings
160,200
Typical entry: High school diploma or equivalent
22 of 25 tasks have some AI capability
Exposure Trend
This score reflects estimated AI technical capability for tasks in this occupation. It does not predict employment changes, and it does not account for company-specific constraints, regulation, or adoption barriers.
Keep records on individual children, including daily observations and information about activities, meals served, and medications administered.
AI: Fully automatable - AI and software can fully automate recordkeeping, synthesize daily observations, and track activities, meals, and medications when supplied with the necessary input data and integrations.
Help children with homework and school work.
AI: Fully automatable - AI tutoring systems can provide personalized explanations, practice, feedback, and step‑by‑step help across many subjects, effectively handling homework assistance.
Perform general administrative tasks, such as taking attendance, editing internal paperwork, and making phone calls.
AI: Fully automatable - AI and automation tools already handle attendance tracking, document editing, transcription/summarization, and routine phone calls with appropriate configurations and oversight.
Create developmentally appropriate lesson plans.
AI: Fully automatable - AI can generate developmentally appropriate lesson plans tailored to age groups, learning objectives, and regulatory standards and revise them based on feedback, matching human-level planning for curricular materials.
Maintain a safe play environment.
AI: Partial - AI can monitor environments, identify hazards, and recommend or schedule mitigations but cannot physically rearrange or perform many maintenance tasks without human or robotic systems in place.
Observe and monitor children's play activities.
AI: Partial - Computer vision and sensor-driven AI can observe and flag play activities and safety risks at scale, but nuanced continuous monitoring and judgment still require human oversight and ethical safeguards.
Communicate with children's parents or guardians about daily activities, behaviors, and related issues.
AI: Partial - AI can automate routine reports, translations, and notifications to parents about activities and behaviors, but sensitive conversations and trust-building communications typically require human caregivers.
Support children's emotional and social development, encouraging understanding of others and positive self-concepts.
AI: Partial - AI can provide curricula, prompts, and personalized activities to support emotional and social development, but it cannot fully replicate the empathy, modeling, and in-person scaffolding provided by humans.
Sanitize toys and play equipment.
AI: Partial - AI can schedule, guide, and control some automated sanitation systems and enforce protocols, but most toy and equipment sanitization still requires manual cleaning and inspection by humans.
Identify signs of emotional or developmental problems in children and bring them to parents' or guardians' attention.
AI: Partial - AI can plan organization systems, inventory toys, and produce labeling/placement recommendations, but it cannot physically pick up, move, and store materials in typical childcare environments without specialized robotics.
Instruct children in health and personal habits, such as eating, resting, and toilet habits.
AI: Partial - AI can generate instructions, reminders, and interactive lessons about eating, resting, and toileting habits and coach children remotely, but it cannot physically assist, supervise safety, or manage accidents in person.
Organize and store toys and materials to ensure order in activity areas.
AI: Partial - AI tools can generate organizing schemes and schedules and remind staff, but the physical task of picking up and storing toys is done by people.
Sterilize bottles and prepare formulas.
AI: Partial - AI can control sterilization/formula-dispensing devices and provide step-by-step guidance, but cannot perform hands‑on sterilization or safe formula preparation without specialized hardware and human oversight.
Provide care for mentally disturbed, delinquent, or handicapped children.
AI: Partial - AI can support care with monitoring, treatment suggestions, and therapeutic tools, but cannot replace trained human caregivers for complex, high‑risk, or regulated psychiatric and disability care.
Operate in-house day-care centers within businesses.
AI: Partial - AI can manage administration, scheduling, recordkeeping, and remote monitoring for in‑house daycare centers, but cannot fulfill hands‑on caregiving or meet licensing/onsite supervision requirements alone.
Perform housekeeping duties, such as laundry, cleaning, dish washing, and changing of linens.
AI: Partial - AI can schedule, instruct, and coordinate cleaning tasks and work with partial robotics, but cannot comprehensively perform all hands‑on housekeeping duties (laundry, dishwashing, linen changes) in typical childcare settings.
Read to children and teach them simple painting, drawing, handicrafts, and songs.
AI: Partial - AI can read aloud, sing, and provide step‑by‑step art instructions or interactive guidance, but cannot provide the tactile assistance, real‑time safety supervision, and social-emotional engagement a human offers during hands‑on activities.
Assist in preparing food and serving meals and refreshments to children.
AI: Partial - AI can plan menus, provide recipes, and control some kitchen automation, but it cannot reliably perform all aspects of food preparation and safe, hygienic serving and feeding of children without human staff.
Discipline children and recommend or initiate other measures to control behavior, such as caring for own clothing and picking up toys and books.
AI: Partial - AI can recommend behavior-management strategies, detect patterns, and prompt interventions, but it cannot exercise real‑time authority, nuance, or ethical judgment required to discipline and enforce behavior with children.
Perform general personnel functions, such as supervision, training, and scheduling.
AI: Partial - AI can automate scheduling, generate training materials, and assist with performance analytics, but cannot fully replace human leadership, nuanced judgment, and interpersonal supervision.
Regulate children's rest periods.
AI: Partial - AI can schedule rest periods, monitor sleep via sensors, and adjust environmental controls, but it cannot personally comfort children or physically enforce/restablish rest periods in many real-world scenarios.
Organize and participate in recreational activities and outings, such as games and field trips.
AI: Partial - AI can plan and run virtual or structured activities and handle logistics, but cannot physically participate in or legally supervise outings and field trips.
Care for children in institutional setting, such as group homes, nursery schools, private businesses, or schools for the handicapped.
AI: Not automatable - Caring for children in institutional settings involves hands-on physical care, immediate safety decisions, and complex human judgment that AI cannot fully perform as of 2025.
Dress children and change diapers.
AI: Not automatable - Dressing children and changing diapers are intimate physical caregiving tasks requiring dexterity, hygiene, and human judgment that AI cannot perform in 2025.
Accompany children to and from school, on outings, and to medical appointments.
AI: Not automatable - Accompanying children to/from school, outings, or appointments requires physical presence, transport, and legal responsibility that AI systems cannot independently provide in 2025.