EXPOSED
Almost nothing a derrickhand does is text or screen work: you're racking pipe on the monkeyboard, tripping tubulars, mixing and monitoring drilling mud, servicing pumps and shakers in weather, at height, on a moving floor. The real threat isn't language AI — it's purpose-built mechanization that already exists: automated pipe-handling and racking systems on modern AC drilling rigs delete the derrick position entirely, moving the work to a chair in the doghouse. This job is physically safe from AI and commercially exposed to rig-generation upgrades plus oil-price cycles.
Nearly all of this fall was the 2020 shock. It has been climbing back since.
Median pay $46,990 → $58,620 -0.2% 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
+0.5% 11,300 → 11,300 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +0.5% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 48/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
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.
~1,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
DrillerFloor HandDerrick ManDerrick HandDerrick WorkerDerrick OperatorDrilling MotormanGas Derrick OperatorOil Derrick OperatorRotary Derrick OperatorFracturing Derrick OperatorWell Service Derrick Worker
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Racking pipe by hand at 80 feet, dressing elevators, adding barite and polymer to the mud system, and clearing shaker screens are all torque-and-touch tasks no language model touches — the 15 rather than 19 reflects that iron roughnecks, automated racker arms, and remote mud-mixing on new-build AC rigs have already demonstrated the whole position can be engineered away, not digitised away.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work strapped into a harness on a monkeyboard in wind, ice, and H2S country, on a rig floor that shifts and pressures that change without warning, hauling 30-foot joints by hand — the only reason this isn't 20 is that a share of the shift is spent at ground level on pumps, shakers, and pits rather than at height.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates the derrick position; you need a rig-hand medical, H2S and well-control awareness tickets, and whatever the operator's HSE program requires, and the drilling contractor and company man carry the legal exposure when something goes downhole.
Meaningful discretion You call weight indicator anomalies, flag mud weight and pit-gain changes, and decide when a stand is unsafe to handle — real calls that keep the well from kicking — but the driller and toolpusher own the well-control decision and the drilling program dictates most of what you do.
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 (4/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (8/20) 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 15 of this occupation's 48 points (31%).
Embodiment (18/20) 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 57/100, still EXPOSED.
Automated racking works on new-build AC rigs with hydraulic catwalks and iron roughnecks, but the surviving fleet of mechanical/SCR rigs, workover and well-servicing units, and plug-and-abandonment spreads still require a human on the board. If the drilling mix shifts further toward workover/P&A and small-operator legacy rigs (as US shale matures and idle-well remediation funding under the 2021 IIJA orphan-well program expands), the remaining derrickhand jobs are concentrated in the un-automatable fleet.
Well-control certification (IADC WellSharp) is already required for the driller and toolpusher but generally not the derrickhand. If BSEE or a state commission (Texas RRC, New Mexico OCD) extends named-and-certified well-control or H2S-monitoring responsibility to the derrick position, or if operator/insurer contracts require a certificated mud-system attendant on site, a specific ticketed human becomes contractually necessary. API RP 754 and post-Macondo BSEE SEMS rulemaking are the places this would appear.
Stop-work authority is nominally universal on rigs but rarely lands on the derrickhand in incident reports. If contractor SEMS programs and IADC guidance formalize the derrickhand as the designated first-responder for kick detection at the shakers and pit-volume totalizer — a call with real consequence made under ambiguity — the role owns a documented decision.
Two genuine tiers exist: routine tripping/racking (automated on new rigs) versus mud system judgment — reading shaker screens, viscosity and gel strength, spotting early kick or lost-circulation signs, and hand-mixing additives. If the derrick position on remaining rigs consolidates into a mud/solids-control hybrid role (as some contractors already fold derrickhand and mud-hand duties together), the day's work becomes the judgment tier.
The limit. No route to trust_premium: the buyer is an operator purchasing footage and days, and nobody pays extra for a human on the monkeyboard. The binding constraint is capital replacement, not AI — automated pipe handling deletes the position on rig upgrade regardless of any institutional lever, so the realistic ceiling is roughly 55 and applies only to the shrinking legacy and workover fleet.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 1,560 | $62,910 +7% |
| Midland, TX | 580 | $56,120 -4% |
| Odessa, TX | 390 | $53,130 -9% |
| Oklahoma City, OK | 260 | $62,370 +6% |
| Farmington, NM | 180 | $52,640 -10% |
| San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX | 160 | $48,880 -17% |
| Lubbock, TX | 120 | $47,690 -19% |
| Tyler, TX | 120 | $63,190 +8% |
| Casper, WY | 30 | $76,840 +31% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 70 | $69,700 +19% |
| Tyler, TX | 120 | $63,190 +8% |
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 48. 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.