EXPOSED
This work is pulling harnesses, tracing intermittent shorts, soldering connectors, and rewiring control systems inside buses, locomotives, ships, and heavy trucks — cramped, dirty, one-off physical environments no robot handles today. AI does compress the diagnostic and documentation layer: fault-code interpretation, wiring-diagram lookup, repair-history summaries, and parts identification are increasingly software tasks. The real exposure is not replacement but thinning — fewer hours spent reasoning through diagnostics, more hours as the hands executing an AI-narrowed repair, and no licensure requirement to anchor the role the way electricians have.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
Median pay $62,530 → $84,890 +8.6% 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
+6.1% 7,000 → 7,400 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +6.1% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 62/100 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.
~600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
WirerBody WirerReel RepairerTubing TesterElectronic TesterMobile TechnicianElectronic MechanicMetrology TechnicianControl TroubleshooterLocomotive ElectricianCritical Power TechnicianDiagnostic TroubleshooterElectrical TroubleshooterElectronic TroubleshooterProduction TroubleshooterCritical Systems TechnicianElectronic Bench TechnicianMarine Electronics RepairerShip Yard Electrical PersonMobile Electronics InstallerMarine Electronics TechnicianPower Technician (Power Tech)Electronic Repair TroubleshooterCritical Power Install Technician
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Chasing an intermittent short in a locomotive's control cabinet means wiggle-testing connectors, pulling terminal blocks, and reading a meter while a helper cycles the system — nothing in that loop can be done by a model, which is why this sits at 16 rather than mid-band, and the 4 points come off because fault-code translation, diagram retrieval, and repair-order write-up already migrate to software.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work inside the vehicle — under bus dashboards, in ship engine-room voids, on a truck chassis with a drop light — soldering, crimping, and heat-shrinking in positions no fixture can be built around, and the vehicles come to you in every state of corrosion and prior bad repair, which is what separates an 18 from a bench technician at 10.
Certification preferred, not legally required There is no state licence for transportation electrical work the way there is for a journeyman electrician; you may hold ASE, FAA A&P for some airframe-adjacent shops, or a shop's internal certification, and the carrier's or shipyard's DOT/FRA/Coast Guard compliance obligation sits with the employer, not your signature — hence 7 and not 14.
Meaningful discretion Deciding whether a corroded harness gets a splice or full replacement, or whether an intermittent fault is safe to release into service on a passenger bus, is your call with real consequence and no procedure that resolves it, but a supervisor signs off on out-of-scope repairs and OEM service manuals bound much of the decision — 13 rather than 17.
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 (16/20 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 (7/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (8/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) 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 28 of this occupation's 62 points (45%).
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.
Ship Engineers SAFE
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 80/100 — SAFE.
Marine side: USCG or insurer requirement that vessel electrical repairs be signed by an ABYC Certified Marine Electrical technician for insurability — marine insurers (e.g. survey-triggered requirements after fire claims) already demand ABYC-compliant work on some hulls; a hard underwriting condition naming a certified individual would anchor the role.
Task-mix shift as fault-code lookup and diagram retrieval fully automate: the residual job concentrates in intermittent, vibration- and corrosion-induced faults that produce no reproducible code — chafed harnesses, ground-path resistance, connector fretting on one-off retrofit vehicles. This tier rises as a share of hours without any law changing, but only sustains the score if apprentice pipelines survive the loss of the routine tier.
A named-individual sign-off requirement for high-voltage EV/hybrid work on transit buses and trucks — e.g. a state OSHA or FTA rule tying NFPA 70E-qualified-person status to a specific certified technician who documents de-energization and lockout on 600V+ traction systems, with personal certification at risk. Transit agencies and OEM HV certification schemes (Cummins, BAE, Proterra-lineage programs) already gate who may open a battery box; converting agency policy into a licensure/countersign requirement is the step.
Federal Railroad Administration rules under 49 CFR Part 229/238 requiring an identified qualified person to certify electrical and event-recorder/PTC wiring work after repair, in the way brake-system inspections already require a named qualified inspector. Extension of existing FRA qualified-person language to electrical control circuits is a recognizable rule change.
Formal fit-for-service release authority: a union or agency contract making the technician the person who authorizes a bus or locomotive back into revenue service after electrical repair (door interlocks, wheelchair lift, propulsion isolation), with that release logged under their name. Some transit agencies already log releasing mechanic ID; making it an accountable, auditable sign-off rather than a data field is the change.
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: the buyers are fleet operators, transit agencies, and shipyards purchasing on downtime and cost, not on the identity of the technician. Only the small yacht/custom-coach niche pays for a named human, and it is too small to move the occupation. Also note liability gains here attach to high-voltage and rail-safety subsegments; a technician on ordinary heavy-truck accessory wiring picks up none of them.
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 360 | $122,590 +44% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 330 | $93,760 +10% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 270 | $98,850 +16% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 220 | $80,200 -6% |
| Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk, VA-NC | 190 | $87,860 +3% |
| Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN | 140 | $59,210 -30% |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 140 | $81,920 -3% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 130 | $122,140 +44% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 360 | $122,590 +44% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 130 | $122,140 +44% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 90 | $116,810 +38% |
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 62. 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.