EXPOSED
The core task — converting speech to accurate text in real time — is exactly what automatic speech recognition now does at usable quality, including live captioning of broadcasts and meetings, which is the tier collapsing fastest. What holds the occupation up is regulatory: many states require a certified shorthand reporter or licensed notary to administer oaths, certify the official transcript, and be personally accountable for its accuracy in a deposition or courtroom, and 'digital reporting' with a human monitor is already the cost-cutting compromise. Expect the job to contract toward certified legal reporting and away from captioning, with pay pressure as ASR-plus-editor becomes the default workflow.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $60,130 → $72,420 -3.6% 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
-0.3%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 12,870 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -0.3% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
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.
~1,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RecorderStenographerCourt MonitorCourt RecorderCourt ReporterStenocaptionerDigital ReporterText TranscriberTranscript ClerkCourt TranscriberHearings ReporterJudicial ReporterCourt StenographerRealtime CaptionerShorthand ReporterStenotype OperatorDeposition ReporterDigital Court ReporterVoice Writing ReporterCourt Recording MonitorOfficial Court ReporterRealtime Court ReporterElectronic Court RecorderCertified Shorthand Reporter (CSR)
Holding it up: liability shield . Weakest point: task resistance .
Core tasks are already automatable Verbatim capture of spoken proceedings, timestamping, and rough-draft turnaround are now done end-to-end by ASR engines that outperform stenographers on multi-speaker broadcast feeds at a fraction of the cost, and even readback and speaker identification are increasingly handled by diarization plus an audio scrub, which is why this sits at 4 rather than mid-band — the residual human work is proofreading a machine draft, not producing the record.
Some physical or field component A 5 reflects that you physically show up: hauling and setting the steno machine, tripod mics, and backup recorders into courtrooms, hotel conference rooms, hospital bedsides for medical depositions, and occasionally site inspections, but the environment is climate-controlled and the work is done seated at a keyboard, so there is nothing hands-on that a technician couldn't replicate.
Licensed human required and personally liable The 12 is carried by state licensure — CSR or RPR registration in California, Texas, and roughly two dozen other states, notary authority to administer the oath under Rule 30(b), and your personal certificate on the transcript that makes you the one deposed if accuracy is challenged — but it stops well short of 20 because captioning work requires no licence at all and states have been actively authorizing digital reporting with an unlicensed monitor to fill vacancies.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs At 6, your discretion is real but tightly bounded: deciding when to interrupt for a clarification, how to mark an inaudible or a stipulation, applying the transcript format rules of the jurisdiction and the accepted punctuation conventions — all procedural calls with written guidance behind them, not ambiguous decisions where you own the outcome.
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 (12/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (7/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (6/20) 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 25 of this occupation's 34 points (74%).
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.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to court reporters and simultaneous captioners 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 53/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift: as broadcast/CART captioning and meeting transcription collapse to ASR, the surviving work is realtime deposition with crosstalk, heavy accents, technical/medical terminology, readback on demand, and exhibit marking — the tier ASR fails at. The occupation genuinely has two tiers and the residual is the judgment tier.
Court rules requiring the certifying reporter to attest under penalty of perjury that no automated transcription was used unattended, or to disclose AI assistance — analogous to emerging judicial standing orders on AI use in filings. Personal exposure for an uncertified AI-assisted transcript raises the shield.
State supreme court rules or legislation explicitly barring electronic/digital recording as the official record in courts of record and requiring a CSR/RPR-certified reporter to swear witnesses and certify transcripts — the pattern in California (CCP §269 and the CSR Board's stenographic-only official record) and in bills backed by NCRA state affiliates in Texas, Illinois and New Jersey. A rule that ASR-generated transcripts are inadmissible as the official record without a certified human certification page and personal liability for accuracy would lift this further.
Formal duties that require on-the-spot calls: ruling on whether a record is audible enough to proceed, interrupting for clarification, producing certified readback during objections, and handling sealed/redacted testimony. If state boards codify these as non-delegable reporter duties (as NCRA's proposed standards for the official record do), the role owns consequential ambiguity calls rather than just typing.
Litigation-driven demand: appellate reversals or sanctions traced to garbled AI transcripts (already litigated in disputes over digital-recording gaps) leading large litigation firms and insurers to specify stenographic reporters in engagement terms. Narrow, and confined to high-stakes civil work.
The limit. Even with strong stenographer-protection statutes, the ceiling is low: the protected niche is a shrinking share of a 12,870-worker occupation, many states have already authorized digital reporting with a non-certified monitor during reporter shortages, and captioning has no licensure hook at all. Deaf/HoH accessibility law (ADA, FCC caption quality rules) mandates accuracy, not a human — so it does not become a liability shield for the captioner.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,060 | $90,230 +25% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 510 | $76,790 +6% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 440 | $48,430 -33% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 290 | $86,510 +19% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 260 | $80,000 +10% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 260 | $129,380 +79% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 260 | $129,270 +79% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 240 | $74,760 +3% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 50 | $143,170 +98% |
| Stockton-Lodi, CA | 30 | $138,340 +91% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 230 | $133,900 +85% |
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 34. 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.