COOKED
The core of this job — converting engineer or architect sketches into dimensioned CAD plans, generating sections and elevations, applying title blocks and standard details, updating drawing sets after markups — is exactly the structured, rule-governed screen work that generative CAD/BIM tooling and parametric templates are eating fastest. The drafter does not sign or seal the drawings; the licensed PE or architect carries the liability, so there is no regulatory moat protecting the seat. What survives is closer to BIM coordination: clash detection, as-built field verification, and translating messy survey and utility data into a model that actually matches the ground.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $56,340 → $66,150 -6.1% 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
+4.1% 110,500 → 115,100 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +4.1% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
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.
~10,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
DrafterDesignerDetailerArchitectDraftsmanGas DrafterOil DrafterDraftspersonCivil DrafterCivil DesignerCivil EngineerMarine DrafterSteel DetailerTruss DesignerPiping DesignerBuilding DrafterCivil TechnicianDesign DraftsmanPlumbing DrafterLandscape DrafterPlumbing DesignerCommercial DrafterGeological DrafterStructural Drafter
Holding it up: task resistance . Weakest point: trust premium .
Core tasks are already automatable Producing a plan-and-profile sheet from an alignment file, dropping in standard curb-return and manhole details from the office library, renumbering sheets and updating the revision cloud after a markup — Revit and Civil 3D already automate most of this through families, dynamic blocks and sheet-set manager, and the remaining hand-work is layer cleanup and plot styles, which is why this sits at 6 rather than in the mixed band.
Some physical or field component You are at a dual-monitor workstation nearly all day; the 5 accounts for the occasional site visit to verify as-builts, measure an existing building for a renovation set, or walk a corridor with a survey crew to check what the utility base map got wrong — real trips, but a handful a month, not a daily field posting.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licenses drafters; the PE stamp or architect's seal on the title block belongs to someone else, and while an ADD or Autodesk certification may get you interviewed, it is never a legal condition of the work being accepted by a plan reviewer.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs You make real calls on dimensioning strategy, detail scale, sheet composition and whether a section actually reads — but they route through a checkprint and back-check cycle where the engineer of record resolves anything ambiguous, so the discretion is drafting-convention discretion, not design liability.
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 (6/20 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 (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (5/20) 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 11 of this occupation's 22 points (50%).
Embodiment (5/20) 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.
Civil Engineers EXPOSED
Aerospace Engineers EXPOSED
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 36/100 — EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift toward BIM coordination: if routine sheet production is fully automated, the remaining seat is clash detection across MEP/structural models, reconciling conflicting utility as-builts, and field verification where surveyed conditions contradict the model. This tier genuinely exists (BIM Coordinator / VDC roles) and is not rule-governed. Watch for job postings retitled from 'CAD Drafter' to 'BIM Coordinator' with Navisworks/Revit clash workflows as the core duty.
Growth of as-built field verification and reality capture: laser scanning (Leica/Faro/Matterport), scan-to-BIM registration, and walking active construction sites to confirm existing conditions before renovation documentation. Existing-building retrofit and energy-code renovation work pushes more of the week onto site. Watch for drafters carrying scanner certification and site-safety (OSHA 10/30) requirements in postings.
Clash-resolution authority in IPD and design-build contracts: where the BIM Execution Plan names a coordinator who resolves spatial conflicts and issues RFIs, the seat owns consequential calls whose cost of error is measured in rework. Watch for AIA/ConsensusDocs BIM addenda that assign model-coordination responsibility (and E&O exposure) to a named individual rather than the design firm generally.
State licensing boards or NCEES-model rules requiring a named, qualified 'model author of record' or documented human model-integrity review before a BIM model is submitted as a contract deliverable — analogous to how some jurisdictions are drafting digital-signature and electronic-seal rules for model-based permitting. Also watch permit authorities (e.g., jurisdictions piloting model-based plan review) requiring an identified preparer attestation distinct from the sealing PE.
The limit. No plausible route to trust premium: the buyer is a contractor or design firm, the drawing set is the product, and no client pays extra to know a human drew the linework. Liability also stays structurally weak because the seal belongs to the PE/architect by statute in every state, and no board has shown appetite to license the drafting tier. Even with every lever above, this stays a low-scoring occupation whose survivors are a minority who moved into coordination and field capture.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 6,710 | $77,170 +17% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 4,130 | $63,120 -5% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 3,890 | $76,630 +16% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 3,360 | $66,890 +1% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 2,170 | $74,180 +12% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 2,150 | $79,310 +20% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 2,120 | $79,860 +21% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 2,110 | $67,020 +1% |
| Bridgeport-Stamford-Danbury, CT | 110 | $84,440 +28% |
| Rochester, MN | 60 | $83,780 +27% |
| Waterbury-Shelton, CT | 40 | $83,630 +26% |
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 22. 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.