Carpenters

Tasks largely resist digitisation. Cutting a bird's-mouth on a rafter to a ridge that's 3/8" out of level, shimming a jamb until a door swings shut against a racked 1920s opening, and toe-nailing blocking overhead in a joist bay are sequences no digital tool executes; only the pre-cut side — panel layouts, cut lists, and material takeoffs — has already moved to software, which is why this sits at 18 rather than the low teens.

Hands-on in uncontrolled environments. You work off a ladder in the rain, kneel on a subfloor to nail base, crawl under a house to sister a joist, and carry sheet goods up stairs — every duty happens at an unfixtured, changing location with no controlled workcell, so there is no fraction of the day that maps to a screen.

Certification preferred, not legally required. There is no journeyman carpenter license in most states — a general contractor's license or a jobsite competent-person OSHA card sits with the company, not with you personally, so a 5 reflects apprenticeship credentials and fall-protection/scaffold certifications being expected rather than any statute making you the signing party on the work.

Some relationship component. A finish or remodel carpenter who gets repeat kitchen and built-in work through homeowner referrals owns the relationship, but the same job is routinely won on bid by a crew the client never meets, and a production framer on a tract subdivision is interchangeable to the builder — 12 is the average of those two realities, not a claim that clients ask for you by name.

Meaningful discretion. You decide whether an existing header carries the new opening, where to relieve a crown that won't scribe, and when a wall is far enough out to shim versus rip out — real calls made without waiting for the engineer, but a stamped plan, inspector, and code table bound most of them, which keeps this at 13 instead of the high-stakes band.