COOKED
Trimming excess material from molded parts, hand-cutting fabric or foam to pattern, and deburring by knife or shears are physical tasks that language AI cannot touch — but they are exactly the repetitive, fixed-geometry work that CNC routers, die cutters, waterjet, laser, and vision-guided trimming cells already do faster and more consistently. The job is protected from AI and exposed to ordinary capital equipment, and employment (about 6,000 nationally) has been shrinking for years. There is no license, no client relationship, and almost no discretionary decision-making to fall back on.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $30,200 → $38,020 +0.7% 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
-18.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 6,060 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 -18.1% 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.
~600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
BuckerDinkerLapperRipperSeamerShaperClipperFlesherPearlerScarrerSkinnerSlitterTrimmerButtonerFinisherSpreaderStripperDiagrammerFur CutterHand CoperMat CutterMica SizerRug CutterCane Cutter
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier A 10 reflects the split inside the job: nesting and cutting flat stock to a repeated pattern is already handled by die and laser cutting cells, while the residual work — trimming flash off an irregular casting, cutting around a hide's flaws, handling limp foam or leather that won't hold registration — still needs a hand on the shears, which is why it sits mid-band rather than at 4.
Some physical or field component You stand at a bench in a plant with knives, shears, and abrasive wheels, and the parts come to you — controlled indoor workspace, fixed station, no crawling into attics or working off a lift — which caps this at 12 instead of the 15+ a field trade would earn.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence, no certification body, no personal sign-off on the piece; if a trimmed part fails inspection it goes back to the line as scrap under the plant's QC system, not against your name.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Cut lines are set by the pattern, template, or scribe mark and tolerances are handed down on the work order; the only calls you own are when to reject an obviously bad piece and when to change a dull blade, which is why this is a 3 and not a 7.
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 (10/20 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 (0/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (2/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (3/20) 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 5 of this occupation's 27 points (19%).
Embodiment (12/20) 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.
Food Preparation Workers EXPOSED
Dishwashers EXPOSED
Cooks, Restaurant 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 39/100 — EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift within the shrinking remainder: if CNC/waterjet/die-cutting absorbs all fixed-geometry trimming, the residual hand work is non-repeating, variable-geometry pieces — hand-trimming of large composite aerospace layups, one-off architectural foam, hide/leather cutting where natural material variation defeats nesting software. This tier already exists in leather goods (hide grading before cut) and composites finishing, and does not automate with the same capital.
Where hand trimming sits inside an AS9100/Nadcap-controlled composite finishing operation, the trimmer becomes a designated inspector-operator whose call on whether a trim breached ply or exposed fiber is a recorded disposition. If a prime (Boeing/Spirit-type supplier flowdown) requires named operator sign-off on trim-and-inspect steps, discretion and accountability attach to the person.
Concentration of remaining employment into unstructured settings — trimming inside cured composite assemblies, on-aircraft or on-boat-hull finishing, or field trim of installed foam/insulation — where the part cannot be brought to a fixture. Vision-guided trimming cells require the workpiece to come to the machine.
Only in the narrow craft segment: hand-cut leather, bespoke tailoring, luthiery, where a maker's-mark or 'hand-cut' claim is the product. Requires the worker to be inside a branded craft business, not a production shop, and would apply to a few hundred people at most.
The limit. No licensing route exists or is being proposed, so liability_shield stays 0. Even with every lever, this occupation tops out in the high 30s: the displacement pressure is capital equipment already installed and amortizing, which no institutional change reverses, and the headcount base is 6,000 and falling.
| Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC | 590 | $49,200 +29% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 530 | $37,500 -1% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 440 | $39,160 +3% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 380 | $36,840 -3% |
| Greensboro-High Point, NC | 200 | $37,020 -3% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 130 | $40,970 +8% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 130 | $25,900 -32% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 110 | $41,890 +10% |
| Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, NC | 590 | $49,200 +29% |
| Winston-Salem, NC | 50 | $45,520 +20% |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 40 | $45,250 +19% |
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 27. 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.