{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/electrical-electronic-and-electromechanical-assemblers-except-coil-winders-tapers-and-finishers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical Assemblers, Except Coil Winders, Tapers, and Finishers",
    "soc_code": "51-2028",
    "category": "Production",
    "us_employment": 246970,
    "median_annual_wage": 45850
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 28,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 12,
    "embodiment": 10,
    "liability_shield": 1,
    "trust_premium": 2,
    "judgment_accountability": 3
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Populating through-hole boards and dressing a harness by hand still defeats a pick-and-place line at lot sizes of 20, but SMT reflow, automated crimp presses, and AOI already own the volume work you used to do, which puts this at 12 rather than 16 — the manual dexterity holds, the demand for it doesn't.",
    "embodiment": "You are standing at an ESD bench under a magnifier with hand tools, torque drivers, and test fixtures — physical, but in a climate-controlled, lit, fixtured cell where parts arrive in kitted trays, which is why this sits at 10 and not with the field technician crawling through a machine room at 16.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licence gates this bench; IPC-A-610 or J-STD-001 certification may be required by your employer's customer, but the QA engineer or DER signs the acceptance and the company's AS9100/ISO cert carries the exposure, not your initials on the traveler.",
    "trust_premium": "The assembly ships in a box with a serial number and a test report; the customer never learns which operator built it, and swapping you for the operator on second shift changes nothing they can detect — the 2 reflects that your lead knows your yield rate, and no one else does.",
    "judgment_accountability": "You work to a build print, a bill of materials, and a written work instruction with rev control, and when a part doesn't fit or a board fails test the call goes to the engineer via a nonconformance tag — the 3 covers the real discretion you do have in solder rework and troubleshooting a bad joint before escalating."
  },
  "rationale": "The work — populating boards, crimping and routing harnesses, torquing fasteners, running functional test fixtures, logging results on work orders — is manual rather than text-based, so language AI barely touches it directly. The real pressure is industrial: pick-and-place, automated wire-cutting and crimping cells, AI vision inspection, and offshoring already absorb the high-volume tiers, and BLS has this occupation shrinking for years. What persists is low-volume, high-mix, prototype, and rework assembly where fixturing a robot costs more than a technician's hands, but that tier is smaller than the current headcount and carries no license, no signature, and no client relationship.",
  "outlook": "Headcount keeps eroding through automation and offshoring; the jobs that remain are prototype, rework, and machine-tending roles held by people with IPC credentials and troubleshooting skill.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Task-mix shift toward low-volume, high-mix, prototype, and field-rework assembly: hand-soldering fine-pitch or through-hole rework on mixed-technology boards, one-off harness building in aerospace/defense NPI shops, and repair of legacy units where no fixture or CAD exists. Fixturing cost per unit keeps these off automated lines regardless of model capability.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier split: if the high-volume populate-and-test tier is fully absorbed by pick-and-place plus AI optical inspection, the residual job becomes diagnostic rework, first-article build from ambiguous drawings, and debugging why a prototype fails test — work that requires inferring intent from an incomplete BOM. Watch IPC-A-610 Class 3 rework and NPI-only job postings displacing 'assembler I' postings.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Certification-gated build authority: if defense and space primes tighten flowdown so that NASA-STD-8739.4 / J-STD-001ES space-addendum operator certification (and named operator traceability in the build record) becomes a hard contract condition rather than a preference, plus ITAR-driven onshore-only build, a specific certified human's stamp attaches to the joint. Similar route via FAA repair-station certificated personnel for avionics harness work, or IPC-7711/7721 rework certification required by medical-device DHR under FDA QSR.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Escalation authority in an automated line: if the surviving role becomes the human who dispositions vision-system rejects, signs the material review board nonconformance, and decides scrap-versus-rework on a high-value assembly, the call is consequential and traceable to a person. Watch for 'assembler' postings that carry MRB or line-stop authority.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Narrow but real: hand-built premium electronics — boutique audio amplifiers, guitar pedals, analog synths, restoration of vintage gear — where point-to-point hand wiring is advertised as the product. This is a few thousand jobs at most and is not a route for the 247k headcount.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "The binding constraint is industrial automation and offshoring, not model capability, so most levers only protect a tier smaller than current headcount. Certification and MRB routes raise the score of the surviving job without saving the jobs already gone; a higher register score here would describe a much smaller occupation."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 263040,
        "wage": 32530
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 275450,
        "wage": 33660
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 285190,
        "wage": 34810
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 283800,
        "wage": 36390
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 271920,
        "wage": 37460
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 275510,
        "wage": 38580
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 267440,
        "wage": 40490
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 261140,
        "wage": 44040
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 246970,
        "wage": 45850
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -6.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}