Secretaries and administrative assistants, already in decline, confront a new and expanding threat: artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT and Claude that can tap to complete parts of their labor.
Employment prediction data paints a dismal picture for the women-dominated profession that may be more vulnerable to losing jobs to AI than the broader population. But other administrations are embracing the tech — even utilizing it as a tool to move ahead.
Deanna Danger, 43, has worked in an administrative capacity since 2003. Her work is constantly shifting and keeping up with the pace of change is a vital aspect of it, and AI is no exception, she says.
“You just have to evolve,” she says.
Danger began employing AI in a professional context in 2022, learning by trial and error and working with other admins. Now she doesn’t take notes anymore in meetings – she has Copilot and ChatGPT handle it for her. “That gives her the freedom to actually participate in the meetings and not just worry about making sure I typed out everything that was said,” says Danger, executive assistant to the chief information officer at Vanderbilt University. “I used to spend hours on things that I get done in less than five minutes, honestly.”
It remains to be seen how, and how much, AI can transform her career, although jobs for secretaries and administrative assistants have been on the decline for decades. In 2004, the role employed around 3.5 million people, and according to Current Population Survey data, about 97 percent of them were women. Two decades later the number had shrunk to 2.1 million – even as the total workforce expanded during the same period.
And except from medical secretaries and administrative assistants — a group that is expected to expand 4% by 2034 due to growth of the healthcare business — economists at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast continuous decline in the field.
“The overall story in office and admin occupations from the projection standpoint for the last several cycles has been one of productivity-enhancing technologies, limiting demand for employment,” said Emily Rolen, lead economist for the division of employment predictions at the BLS. Technology also affected administrative jobs, with tools like word processing, speech-to-text transcription, scheduling software and applications changing what they did and helping fuel the overall fall.
Clerical and administrative workers may be more likely to lose their jobs to AI than other professionals because they “lack adaptive capacity due to limited savings, advanced age, scarce local opportunities, and/or narrow skill sets,” according to a report published in January by the Brookings Institution. Of the 6 million workers, some 86% are women.
In fact, more secretaries and administrative assistants are 55 and older than the overall workforce (34 percent compared to 23 percent), median salary is lower than that of all U.S. workers ($47,460 compared to $49,500), and a high school diploma is enough to get many entry-level jobs.
But what the labor statistics misses, the Brookings paper notes, is an individual’s capacity to negotiate a shifting landscape, such as administrative assistants like Danger, who say they “are way more capable than people think.”
Danger has a regular virtual coffee talk for peers through the American Society of Administrative Professionals, a professional club that says it serves roughly 132,000 members. During a workshop in May, participants revealed how they’re using AI, including to create posters, scout restaurants for executive events, come up with captions for employer social media accounts, create wording for standard operating procedures and more.
But despite the overwhelming excitement, some participants emphasized issues such as data security and the lack of AI legislation. Others stressed that AI can’t and won’t replace the emotional intelligence and relationship-building skills that are trademarks of a successful admin.
Fiona Young, creator of Carve, a startup that trains executive assistants in AI, says she has seen “a massive shift in demand” for her services since 2023. Young, a former executive assistant herself, says she’s provided AI training to administrative workers worldwide, including at Google, Amazon, Uber, Salesforce and LinkedIn. Employers, in her experience, want staff who can use AI. “Not just have a loose understanding of it, but actually use it as part of how people are working every day,” she says.
Oana Manolache is even more aggressive. “I will fire anyone not using AI,” the founder and CEO of Sequel.io, a platform that allows corporations to hold webinars on their own sites, stated in a LinkedIn post last year.
But even Manolache insists AI isn’t going to replace her executive assistant, Stephanie Martinez.
Meanwhile, Martinez has used AI to “free yourself” from things like taking notes and preparing for meetings, so you can focus on the “human work” of developing team connectedness, making judgment judgments, understanding the relationships between executives and stakeholders and communicating accordingly, Manolache says.
But “it doesn’t replace what an executive assistant does now as the role has evolved,” Manolache argues, perhaps AI might replace the traditional assistant.
Martinez is remote, working from El Salvador through Viva Talent, which is another illustration of how the position is evolving, training and matching assistants from Latin and South America to predominantly U.S.-based tech companies.
“There’s a big opportunity for those who really want to succeed in this role,” adds Manolache. “This individual has access to information across the whole organization.”
For example, when the company wanted to get more evaluations from customers on a software review platform, Martinez, who handles most of the bills and billing, took a creative approach to the problem. She used AI to analyze all customer conversations, identify strong review prospects, and write outreach letters. "It would have taken her so much time to do this without AI," says Manolache, who adds that it also allowed Martinez to "think creatively."
“That freedom to strategically implement AI is as important as education and training because many assistants are interested in adopting AI but don’t have the bandwidth to incorporate it,” says Melissa Peoples, an executive assistant coach located in Austin, Texas, and former C-suite executive assistant.
That problem is compounded in an industry dominated by women commonly coupled with male bosses, Peoples says.
“Then you see the early adopters, they’re killing it, they’re partnered with really empowering executives and they can do all of these things,” she says. And then you see the other side of things, when assistants are basically told, ‘You’re not clever enough to be in the room. “Just bring me my coffee.”
“If you have good AI training, you can find your voice and have more impact so you are protected against what is going to happen as agentic AI becomes more common and more easily accessible,” Peoples adds.
