Who is more replaceable? The investment banker making six figures a year; or the high school math teacher making only a third of what the i-banker makes?

For years now, it’s been considered common sense that the STEM majors have the lion’s share of highest paying jobs in the labor market. Jobs which require cognitive skills, such as reading comprehension and mathematical understanding, are lucrative skills which fetch high salaries for recent college graduates. Politicians as distinguished as former President Barack Obama are on record lauding cognitive skill-intensive jobs and hand waving liberal arts majors such as English, Communications, and Art History.

After all, we all associate the people in these educational fields as either relegating themselves to low-paying, low-prestige jobs like high school teachers and Starbucks baristas.

Proponents of such professional majors are right to argue that graduates do make more on average in lifetime earnings than others. Cognitive skills are still critically important in the labor market. These advocates are, however, missing an important aspect to this. Recent evidence suggests that lower-paying jobs, typically teaching, counselling, and social work boast an advantage: they are less prone to automation than higher-paying ones like finance, computer science, and engineering.

Martin Chavez, Chief Financial Officer of Goldman Sachs, discussed this topic at a talk at Harvard earlier this year. The number of Wall Street traders working at Goldman Sachs has shrunk from 600 to merely two in the span of only seventeen years. The humans doing much of the work have long been replaced by unpaid robots. According to Chavez, “The future of the financial industry lies in virtual machines and strong API contracts. We are redesigning our businesses around those principles.” Chavez and others are convinced the future of the financial industry is shifting towards algorithms and software.

But with the fall of the market analysts come the rise of the salesmen. According to the Hamilton project, the US economy is demanding non-cognitive skills, skills difficult to measure through standardized testing such as perseverance, leadership, and connectedness with others. The report measured the significance of math tasks, routine tasks, service tasks, and social skill tasks relative to the their importance in the 1980 labor market. The report found the following throughout the 30 year period.

The need for social skills grew by 16 percent.

Service-based skills grew by 17 percent.

Routine tasks have declined by 10 percent.

Math-related tasks have only grown by 5 percent.

This suggests that as computer automation has advanced, so has the de-emphasization of routine and math-related tasks. Why hire an analyst to collect data on the market when a computer can do the same in less time without payment?

What are the jobs most likely to go to the robots? Jobs which rely primarily on predictable physical work (think people working in assembly lines), data processing, and data collection are the ones with the most automation potential according to a report published by McKinsey.

What are the jobs least likely to go to the robots? Simply put, the ones requiring non-cognitive skills. Evidence points to the fact that although machines can perform skills like predictable physical labor and processing data, they cannot automate “soft” skills such as connecting with others.

This trend is demonstrated in the case of bank tellers in the United States. David Author of MIT observed that as ATMs were introduced to the 1970s, they quickly multiplied throughout the country to the point where they nearly quadrupled in number between 1995 and 2010. Intuitively, one would think that bank tellers would disappear from the market. Surprisingly though, the number of bank tellers in the US actually grew modestly from 500,000 to around 550,000 over a 30-year period from 1980 to 2010.

The reason why bank tellers are still around today is because they occupy a sweet spot in the job market. Namely, they possess both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. According to Autor, “Workers are more likely to benefit directly from automation if they supply tasks that are complemented by automation, but not if they primarily (or exclusively) supply tasks that are substituted.” Autor’s point is that bank tellers before ATMs were concerned with computation as well as interacting with customers. But with the advent of the ATM, “relationship banking” has become essential as the emphasis is now on selling products and acting as bank representatives to customers instead of crunching numbers.

Put it this way: if you are a ditch digger who can only dig holes with a shovel but can’t operate an excavator, you will probably experience falling wages. But, if you are a tradesman requiring expertise such as a carpenter, chances are you will experience rising wages as machines complement your work and help your productivity.

The human element becomes all the more important in the digital revolution. Which is why some low-paying, soft skill-intensive jobs such as teaching will be protected somewhat from automation. Robots can’t replicate the human element of preschool teachers. Preschool teaching demands the little things such as when to wipe away a tear or encouraging a shy kid to play with the others.

While many believe that teaching software such as Khan Academy are set to replace teachers, these websites and software won’t be much more than tools teachers use to communicate information. The best teachers are not just capable of relaying information well; but also are able to connect with students on a deeper level. If anything, teaching aids like Khan Academy will enhance, rather than replace, the teaching profession. Khan Academy and programs like it make interpersonal skills all the more essential for the teaching profession. Sal Khan may be wonderful at explaining concepts intuitively, but this is no replacement for a good classroom teacher.

An excellent educational website or robot is no substitute for a great human teacher. Sal Khan can’t sit down with a struggling student and work through factoring quadratics, nor can he encourage and assuage frustrated student frustrated that he just can’t grasp limits. A teacher is more than the information he relays. He is someone who plans his curriculum based upon his class. He is a counselor who inspires students to learn and tackle problems. One could say that the teacher’s greatest task is to light the spark that launches the student on his intellectual journey. A robot cannot do any of this. These irreplaceable aspects are why teaching is not going to go away anytime soon.

No matter which way one slices it, robots cannot replicate the basic ingredients to connect with others. Robots are not empathetic. Though they can mimic human emotion, they do not feel. A robot can ask us about our childhood like a therapist, but they cannot connect with us on the most fundamental level. A robot cannot replace the social worker consoling the crying child who was taken away from his family.

Another perspective to consider is that if given the choice, humans like to get help from other humans. A robot can mimic humanness. But it cannot be human. One can argue that the time will come when robots will be indistinguishable from humans. But that time is far, far off into the future. It still takes a supercomputer forty minutes to simulate just one percent of the human brain. Can you imagine a computer replacing a used car salesman? These people in fields requiring non-cognitive skills are safe for the time being. Besides, even the most advanced robots at this stage are deep in the uncanny valley. One can be confident that it will take a while before people won’t be able to tell the difference between humans and robots.

To conclude, the way things are headed, jobs which have the biggest paychecks are not guaranteed the most job security. That sophomore majoring in education studies as well as the senior about to graduate in ethnicity, race, and migration can breathe a sigh of relief. Especially if they are thinking about education or taking up a job requiring high levels of non-cognitive skills. But this should not be taken as a vindication of people going into industries undergoing major automation. Cognitive skills are still fairly high value at the moment. Which is why these workers are still bringing home the fat paychecks.

I would then suggest then to those in college not to worry quite as much about your major and more about your networking and internship opportunities. I know people who have graduated from both public and private universities majoring in English and Political Science and are working at excellent companies. They networked, gained experience, and connected with others in college and are now in great positions to benefit. The people who are and will benefit most in the future are those with high cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Economist David Deming confirmed in 2015 that demand is particularly strong for jobs requiring both high cognitive and social skills. So, if you are good at interpreting graphs and connecting with others, then the machine revolution will help, not hurt, you.