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Nurse Practitioners vs Physician Assistants

Side-by-side · O*NET · BLS · AI-exposure research · Anthropic Economic Index

A factual, source-backed comparison of Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants on the dimensions both occupations carry. Every figure is a position within an independent published dataset — not a verdict on which job is better, safer, or more “future-proof.”

Nurse Practitioners Physician Assistants
Median pay · BLS OEWS
$129,210
$133,260
Employment · BLS OEWS
307,390
155,540
AI exposure (percentile) · task overlap, not automation
47th pct
11th pct

At a glance

Dimension Nurse Practitioners Physician Assistants
Median pay $129,210 $133,260
Employment 307,390 155,540
Employment outlook (2024–34) · BLS projection Growing fast (+40.1%) Growing fast (+20.4%)
Annual openings · BLS projection 29,500 12,000
Typical education · O*NET Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree). Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).
AI exposure · published exposure studies Moderate · 47th pct Low · 11th pct
Global GenAI gradient · ILO ISCO-08 · via crosswalk 47th pct · 25% of tasks 43rd pct · 23% of tasks
Observed AI use · Anthropic Economic Index Augmentation-leaning (69.1%) Augmentation-leaning (73.1%)
Mostly remote-capable · Dingel–Neiman No No

Pay and employment are BLS OEWS estimates; outlook and openings are BLS 2024–2034 projections; AI exposure and observed-use figures come from separate research and reflect exposure and usage, not predictions that either job will disappear. Compare like with like.

Skills

Shared: Medicine and Dentistry, English Language, Written Comprehension, Problem Sensitivity, Inductive Reasoning, Biology, Psychology, Customer and Personal Service, Reading Comprehension, Active Listening, Critical Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, Oral Expression, Written Expression, Deductive Reasoning, Near Vision, Writing, Speaking, Active Learning, Monitoring, Social Perceptiveness, Judgment and Decision Making, Therapy and Counseling, Oral Comprehension, Information Ordering, Speech Recognition, Speech Clarity, Service Orientation, Education and Training, Science, Coordination, Sociology and Anthropology, Mathematics, Time Management, Category Flexibility, Persuasion, Flexibility of Closure, Chemistry.

Specific to Nurse Practitioners

  • Learning Strategies
  • Fluency of Ideas

Specific to Physician Assistants

  • Computers and Electronics
  • Systems Evaluation

Knowledge, skills & abilities O*NET rates as important for each occupation. “Shared” are common to both; the columns list what is distinctive to each (top by the order O*NET surfaces).

Tools & technology

Shared: Medical software , Spreadsheet software , Office suite software , Electronic mail software , Word processing software , Internet browser software .

Specific to Nurse Practitioners

Specific to Physician Assistants

Full profiles

This page is a summary. See the complete source-backed profile for Nurse Practitioners or Physician Assistants — tasks, the full skill graph, tools, work context, preparation, wages by percentile, industries, AI exposure and the AI work map.

More comparisons

Related occupations you can place side by side on the same sourced scale.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

Cite this page
Plain

Singulariki. "Nurse Practitioners vs Physician Assistants." Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Built from O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); Microsoft “Working with AI” working-with-ai; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans; ILO / Gmyrek et al. GenAI exposure gradient 2025; IBS O*NET-SOC ↔ ISCO-08 occupation crosswalk 2022; Frey & Osborne (2013) frey-osborne-automation; Dingel & Neiman (2020) dingel-neiman-workathome. Accessed June 7, 2026. https://singulariki.com/compare/nurse-practitioners-vs-physician-assistants

APA

Singulariki. (2026). Nurse Practitioners vs Physician Assistants. Singulariki: a source-backed encyclopedia of work. Retrieved June 7, 2026, from https://singulariki.com/compare/nurse-practitioners-vs-physician-assistants

BibTeX 
@misc{singulariki-nurse-practitioners-vs-physician-assistants,
  title  = {Nurse Practitioners vs Physician Assistants},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024; BLS Employment Projections 2024–2034; Anthropic Economic Index v4 (2026-01-15) + v2 (2025-03-27); Microsoft “Working with AI” working-with-ai; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE) Felten, Raj & Seamans; ILO / Gmyrek et al. GenAI exposure gradient 2025; IBS O*NET-SOC ↔ ISCO-08 occupation crosswalk 2022; Frey & Osborne (2013) frey-osborne-automation; Dingel & Neiman (2020) dingel-neiman-workathome. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/compare/nurse-practitioners-vs-physician-assistants}
}

Citations name the underlying public dataset releases — they reflect what this page is built from, not just the URL.