COOKED
The modal worker here is a truck, taxi, utility, or service dispatcher assigning jobs, sequencing routes, logging calls, and relaying status by phone and radio — exactly the work that fleet telematics, automated dispatch engines, and Uber-style matching algorithms already do at scale. What survives is exception handling: a driver breaks down in a snowstorm, a customer escalates, a crew needs rerouting around an outage with safety and overtime constraints in play. That tier is real but thin, and it needs far fewer people than staffing a phone-and-radio desk did.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $40,190 → $50,340 +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
-0.9% 218,700 → 216,700 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -0.9% 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.
~18,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Car TracerBus StarterCab StarterCar StarterCar SupplierSignal TimerRouting ClerkService ClerkTrain StarterBus DispatcherCar DispatcherDispatch ClerkDrop Board ManGas DispatcherOil DispatcherCar DistributorCity DispatcherCrew DispatcherMine DispatcherSignal OperatorTaxi DispatcherTaxicab StarterWork DispatcherNight Dispatcher
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Assigning the next available driver, sequencing stops, and keying status updates into a CAD or TMS are already shipped features in Samsara, Verizon Connect, and Uber Freight, which is why this sits at 7 rather than 12 — the only tasks that genuinely resist are the multi-constraint reroutes (hours-of-service caps, hazmat routing, a utility crew that has to be pulled off one outage for a higher-priority one) that still need someone to negotiate with humans by voice.
Fully desk- and screen-based You work a console — multiple monitors, a radio headset, a phone queue — and the physical world you coordinate is entirely other people's trucks and crews; the 2 rather than 0 reflects walking the yard or handing keys and paperwork to drivers at shift change in some fleet and taxi operations.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates this desk: utility and trucking dispatch hiring runs on a high school diploma plus on-the-job training, and where credentials exist at all they are voluntary (NAED's Emergency Number Professional, employer radio certs) and carry no personal statutory exposure — the motor carrier and the CDL holder absorb DOT liability, not you.
Meaningful discretion Most of the shift runs on posted priority rules, service-level windows, and escalation scripts, but the 8 recognises the calls that are actually yours: deciding whether to hold a load or reassign it, whether a crew's fatigue and overtime cost outweigh restoring service tonight, whether to pull a driver off a route in bad weather — real discretion, though a supervisor or the safety department signs off on anything expensive.
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 (7/20 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 (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (6/20) 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 24 points (63%).
Embodiment (2/20) 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 dispatchers, except police, fire, and ambulance 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 38/100 — EXPOSED.
If FMCSA or state rules make the dispatcher an accountable party for coercion violations (49 CFR 390.6 driver-coercion rule already names dispatchers) and hours-of-service pressure — enforced with civil penalties against the individual, as plaintiff firms in nuclear-verdict trucking cases increasingly plead dispatch records — the role owns consequential calls with personal exposure.
Hazmat and utility switching dispatch already has named-person requirements in places: PHMSA/49 CFR hazmat carrier communication duties, and NERC-certified System Operator credentialing for switching and tagging orders. If gas/electric utilities or state PUCs extend named-certified-dispatcher sign-off to automated crew-dispatch decisions affecting energized work (post-incident rules after a lineman fatality are the usual trigger), a personally accountable human enters the loop.
Routine assignment/logging is already automated; if the remaining desk is redefined as storm/outage restoration coordination — sequencing utility crews around de-energized lines, mutual-aid crews, and switching orders under FERC/NERC and state PUC restoration reporting — the residual job is ambiguity-tier work AI cannot close out. Watch utility storm-response staffing standards and IBEW system operator classifications.
Narrow route: owner-operator and specialized freight (oversize, reefer, hazmat) brokers where carriers pay a premium for a named human dispatcher who negotiates rates and defends the driver against a shipper. Real but small and not a route for the utility/taxi/service majority.
The limit. Even with the liability and accountability levers, the headcount story doesn't reverse: these rules require *a* certified human per operation, not a room of them. Score could rise while employment keeps falling. No plausible route on embodiment.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 11,590 | $58,180 +16% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 7,700 | $52,170 +4% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 7,170 | $48,030 -5% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 5,720 | $48,550 -4% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 4,200 | $48,280 -4% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 3,690 | $48,930 -3% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 3,550 | $45,980 -9% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 3,540 | $57,160 +14% |
| Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 100 | $64,890 +29% |
| Fairbanks-College, AK | 80 | $62,130 +23% |
| Fargo, ND-MN | 150 | $61,260 +22% |
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 24. 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.