COOKED
This residual category covers console and radio operators who connect calls, relay messages over two-way radio or intercom, monitor equipment status boards, and log traffic — work that automated call routing, IVR, and text-to-speech relay systems have been eating for two decades and that LLM-based agents now finish off. Employment is already down to about 1,200 nationally, which is itself the story: the tasks were absorbed into software, not redesigned around humans. The narrow survivors are operators embedded in safety-critical radio nets (maritime, aviation ground, utility outage rooms) where a human voice on the channel is procedurally required.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $42,790 → $54,680 +2.2% 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
+2.5%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 1,200 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +2.5% 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.
~100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
OperatorReceiverRoute ClerkTelegrapherOil DispatcherRadio OperatorTelex OperatorRadio MaintainerRelay DispatcherService ObserverWireless WatcherRelay TelegrapherTelegrapher AgentWireless OperatorEquipment OperatorTelegraph OperatorWire Transfer ClerkFax Machine OperatorInterceptor OperatorTelegraph DispatcherWireless TelegrapherPay Station AttendantRadio Station OperatorNews Wire Photo Operator
The BLS uses Communications Equipment Operators, All Other for work that doesn't fit any named occupation, so it covers roles that have little in common with each other. Two consequences worth knowing before you read anything below:
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Core tasks are already automatable Patching a caller to an extension, keying a mic to relay a message, and typing a timestamped log entry are all operations software already performs end-to-end — PBX auto-attendants replaced the console, and speech-to-text relay handles the TRS work that once needed a human typist, leaving a 4 rather than a 10 because even the residual radio-net duties are scripted phrasebook exchanges rather than open-ended talk.
Fully desk- and screen-based The job is a headset, a console, and a status board in a heated room; the only physical element is being bodily present at a specific desk during a specific shift and occasionally reseating a cable or swapping a battery on a handheld, which keeps it just above pure remote screen work but nowhere near field service.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates this work — the FCC Marine Radio Operator Permit or GMDSS ticket some maritime posts require is a fee-and-form credential, not a competency licence that makes you personally answerable for a routing error, so the vessel operator or utility carries any consequence.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Traffic is handled against posted call-down lists, priority codes, and phraseology standards, so the discretion available is picking which of a handful of prescribed escalation paths applies to an incoming report — real enough to matter during an outage, narrow enough that the decision tree is written on the wall.
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 (4/20 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 (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (5/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (4/20) 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 19 points (58%).
Embodiment (4/20) 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.
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 in utility outage and transit control rooms: routine status logging and dispatch relay goes to software, leaving the operator doing storm-mode net control — prioritising crew traffic, resolving conflicting field reports, improvising when SCADA and radio disagree. This tier genuinely exists in the survivor niches and does not automate at the same rate.
FCC/FAA/Coast Guard rules that name a licensed human as the required voice on a safety net — e.g. retention or extension of the FCC GMDSS radio operator licence requirement for certain vessel classes, or FAA airport ground/ramp control procedures requiring a certificated human on frequency for movement-area clearances. A rule barring synthetic voice on licensed safety channels (analogous to FCC scrutiny of AI-generated voice under the TCPA) would pin the role to a named licensee.
NIMS/ICS-aligned staffing standards or utility PUC storm-response orders that designate a named human net controller as the accountable communications unit leader during declared emergencies, with post-event review of their calls.
Requirement for on-site presence in hardened facilities during emergencies — some utility and port operations plans already forbid remote-only staffing of the radio room when comms links may fail, forcing a body in the chair with a backup transceiver.
The limit. At 1,200 workers this is already the residue of a completed displacement; even every lever firing protects a niche of a few hundred safety-net positions rather than restoring the occupation. Trust premium has no route — buyers of message relay have never paid extra for a human voice, only regulators have required one.
| San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR | 180 | $22,850 -58% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 170 | $60,630 +11% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 50 | — |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 170 | $60,630 +11% |
| San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR | 180 | $22,850 -58% |
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 19. 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.