EXPOSED
The paperwork half of this job — drafting standard performance contracts, building tour and audition schedules, preparing royalty and appearance-fee summaries, writing pitch emails and press one-sheets, scanning casting notices — is already commodity AI work. What does not automate is the phone call where a promoter is talked off a ledge, the read on whether a client should take the lower-paying prestige role, and the fact that talent signs with a specific person they trust with their career and money. Talent-agency licensing (California, New York) and athlete-agent registration under the UAAA plus union franchising give a real but partial regulatory floor.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $73,740 → $82,890 -10.1% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+8.7%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 12,620 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +8.7% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 59/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~2,200 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
AgentBookerPromoterFilm BookerMusic AgentPrint AgentBand ManagerCircus AgentSports AgentTalent AgentAdvance AgentBooking AgentFight ManagerTalent BookerTouring AgentArtist ManagerAthletic AgentAuthor's AgentBusiness AgentDramatic AgentJockey's AgentLiterary AgentMedia PromoterModeling Agent
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: embodiment .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Roughly half your week — deal memos on standard AFTRA/SAG scale terms, tour routing spreadsheets, commission reconciliations, submission blasts to casting — is templated enough that software already does it, but negotiating a back-end point with a studio business affairs exec or convincing a label to fund a video keeps this at 11 rather than 5.
Some physical or field component You are on a phone and in email most of the day, but the job still drags you to showcases, tryouts, set visits, arena green rooms and airports on someone else's schedule — present but not the substance of the work, which is why this sits at 7 rather than 3.
Certification preferred, not legally required California Labor Code 1700 talent agency licensing, New York employment-agency licensing, UAAA athlete-agent registration and SAG-AFTRA/WGA franchise agreements mean the state can pull your ability to solicit work and clients can void contracts — but there's no exam-gated professional credential, no personal malpractice exposure on a bad negotiation, and unlicensed managers work the same clients daily, so 9 not 15.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls You decide whether a 19-year-old signs the endorsement now or waits for the draft, whether to burn a relationship with a promoter over one bad settlement, and whether to tell a client their career window is closing — irreversible calls on someone else's livelihood with no procedure to fall back on, held just under the top band because you advise rather than execute the final signature.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (11/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (9/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (17/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (15/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 41 of this occupation's 59 points (69%).
Embodiment (7/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to agents and business managers of artists, performers, and athletes on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 74/100 — SAFE.
Personal liability attaching to agents for AI-negotiated likeness/digital-replica clauses under the SAG-AFTRA 2023 consent provisions and state digital-replica statutes (Tennessee ELVIS Act, California AB 1836) — if boards treat improper AI-clause consent as an agent licensing violation
Task-mix shift: once contract drafting, scheduling and royalty summaries are fully commodity, the residual role is career-defining calls under ambiguity — prestige vs. pay, replica-consent, scandal response — where the agent is the accountable party to talent and unions
State labor commissioners (California Talent Agencies Act, NY Article 11) or SAG-AFTRA/WGA franchise agreements explicitly extending fiduciary and licensing liability to AI-generated deal terms and requiring a licensed, named agent of record to sign every engagement contract and escrow client funds — plus NCAA/UAAA states adding a certified-agent signature requirement on NIL deal documents (already partly present in state NIL laws)
Same two-tier shift raises the judgment share of the day; also rises if union-mandated AI-consent negotiation and cross-jurisdiction NIL/digital-replica compliance become non-templatable negotiation work
Union franchising rules or client-side norms barring AI-only representation entities from being agents of record, keeping the named human as the person talent signs with
The limit. Trust premium is already near ceiling at 17 — little headroom. Embodiment has no realistic route; presence at events is optional and not the billable core.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,120 | $97,750 +18% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,490 | $83,820 +1% |
| Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN | 630 | $75,390 -9% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 500 | $100,650 +21% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 320 | $57,410 -31% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 180 | $103,730 +25% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 160 | $98,930 +19% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 150 | — |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 180 | $103,730 +25% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 500 | $100,650 +21% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 160 | $98,930 +19% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 59. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.