EXPOSED
The core of this job — driving a route, opening machines, replacing bill validators and coin mechs, clearing jams, swapping compressors, restocking and collecting cash — is hands-on work in dozens of uncontrolled locations, which no current robot does. What AI and connected hardware do erode is the diagnostic and logistics layer: telemetry-equipped machines now report their own faults, sales, and stock levels, so route planning, service dispatch, and paperwork increasingly happen without a human deciding. The bigger threat to headcount is cashless payment and remote monitoring shrinking the number of visits per machine, not a machine replacing the technician on site.
Nearly all of this fall was the 2020 shock. It has been climbing back since.
Median pay $35,420 → $47,450 +7.2% 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
-2.9%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 26,410 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Shrinking, but not obviously because of AI
The BLS projects -2.9% by 2034, but at 52/100 this work is only moderately exposed — not the profile of a job current AI can simply do. Occupations shrink for many reasons, and the score does not point at automation as this one's cause.
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.
~3,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
VendorRoutemanCoin CollectorMachine FillerService PersonJukebox CheckerRoute AttendantRoute DelivererSlot TechnicianCooler DelivererVending MechanicArcade TechnicianJuke Box MechanicMachine AttendantMachine RepairmanRegister RepairerVending AttendantCoin Box CollectorCoin Box InspectorGum Machine FillerService TechnicianVending TechnicianRefurbish TechnicianVideo Games Mechanic
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Pulling a jammed bill from a validator's transport path, re-timing a coin mech, brazing a leaking refrigerant line in a hallway, and leveling a machine on a warped breakroom floor are tasks no software executes; the 15 rather than 18 reflects that the fault-finding half of your day — figuring out which board or motor failed — is increasingly handed to you by telemetry before you arrive.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are in a van most of the day, then kneeling behind machines in arcade back rooms, hospital corridors, and truck-stop vestibules, lifting glass fronts, handling compressors and 30-pound coin bags in whatever heat, cold, or clearance the site gives you — a 17 rather than 20 only because the sites are indoors and you are not on a roof or in a trench.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates this trade; the exceptions are narrow — an EPA 608 card to touch refrigerant and, in most states, a gaming licence or registration to service slot and route amusement devices — and neither makes you personally liable for the machine's operation the way a signed inspection would.
Meaningful discretion You decide on the spot whether to swap a board, rebuild the mech, or pull the machine, and you reconcile cash discrepancies that can look like theft — real calls, but made against known fault codes, warranty rules, and route sheets rather than genuinely ambiguous stakes.
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 (15/20 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 (8/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) 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 20 of this occupation's 52 points (38%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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.
Medical Equipment Repairers 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 69/100 — SAFE.
Tighter enforcement of EPA Section 608 certification for refrigerant work on refrigerated vendors and coolers, plus the 2024-25 AIM Act HFC transition pushing routes onto R-290 propane equipment, which carries flammable-refrigerant handling rules (UL 60335-2-89) and insurer requirements that only a certified technician open the sealed system. Certification is individual and revocable, not corporate.
Task-mix shift: as telemetry, cashless payment and micro-market conversion strip out the routine restock-and-collect visits, the residual visit is the one telemetry could not resolve — intermittent bill-validator faults, board-level and sealed-system repair, vandalism and water damage in an unmapped location. Two genuine tiers exist here and the lower one is the one being removed.
No route upward from capability change, but the environment can get harder to standardize: heavier R-290 and payment-hardware retrofit mandates plus continued vandalism/water-damage caseload keep the work in uncontrolled sites. This holds the score rather than raising it.
State gaming-board licensing of technicians extended to the new legal 'skill game' / historical-horse-racing terminal fleets (Pennsylvania's pending skill-game regulation bills, Virginia's 2024-25 skill-game framework, Kentucky HHR rules). Slot-route jurisdictions already require a personally licensed, badged technician to break a machine's evidence seal and log the RAM clear; if that regime covers the amusement-machine population broadly, a named licensed human becomes legally necessary for each intervention.
Cash-and-compliance accountability formalized: if state gaming or lottery regulators require the servicing technician to personally attest meter readings, seal integrity and payout-percentage configuration (as Nevada/Pennsylvania slot-route rules already do), the technician owns a consequential call under ambiguity — declaring a machine tampered versus faulty — with license consequences.
The limit. Trust premium is omitted deliberately: the buyer is a vending operator or location owner buying uptime per machine, and no observable segment pays extra for a human servicer as such. Even with full gaming-style licensing, the headcount driver stays visits-per-machine, which cashless payment and telemetry keep cutting — so the realistic ceiling here is roughly the mid-60s, and it is a smaller occupation at a higher score rather than a protected one.
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 1,670 | $45,560 -4% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 1,220 | $56,990 +20% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,070 | $62,970 +33% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 770 | $47,920 +1% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 700 | $60,160 +27% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 590 | $50,390 +6% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 510 | $46,300 -2% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 480 | $51,930 +9% |
| Atlantic City-Hammonton, NJ | 190 | $63,410 +34% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,070 | $62,970 +33% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 230 | $61,370 +29% |
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 52. 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.