SAFE
The core of the job — pulling wire through finished walls, terminating panels, bending conduit in a joist bay, troubleshooting a dead circuit in an occupied building — happens in cramped, non-standardized physical spaces that no current robot handles. AI can already read prints, size conductors, generate load calculations, write estimates and permit paperwork, and diagnose from a photo of a panel, which trims the office and pre-planning hours but not the fieldwork. Most states require a licensed journeyman or master electrician for permitted work and inspection sign-off, and that person carries personal liability for a fire or a shock, which is a regulatory moat that could narrow but shows no sign of doing so.
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $56,180 → $63,190 -10.0% 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
+9.5% 818,700 → 896,100 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +9.5% more of these jobs by 2034. Note that safe does not mean well paid — several of the fastest-growing resistant occupations are among the lowest paid on the register.
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.
~81,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
WirerGafferLinemanWiremanTest ManMine WirerShip WirerSign WirerElectricianHouse WirerTest WorkerWire HangerGround WirerSignal WirerAntenna RiggerElectric WirerInside WiremanInterior WirerNeon InstallerNeon TechnicianOverhead WorkerWiring MechanicConduit MechanicElectrical Wirer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Fishing 12-2 through a plaster wall with no access, bending offsets to hit a knockout that's three-quarters of an inch off print, and chasing an intermittent neutral in a 40-year-old panel are decided by feel and improvisation in the moment, so even though estimating, load calcs and takeoffs are already software-driven, the billable hours sit in tasks with no digital substitute — hence 17 rather than a mid-teens score.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Every day involves attics at 130°F, crawlspaces, scissor lifts, trenches, live 480V gear in a mechanical room and ladders on unfinished slab — the work is not merely physical, it is physical in environments that change hour to hour and were never designed for a machine to enter, which is what a 20 means.
Licensed human required and personally liable Permitted work requires a licensed journeyman or master under state law, the master's licence is on the permit and the AHJ inspector signs against that name, and a fire traced to a loose lug or an unbonded ground lands on that person's licence and insurance; it sits at 16 rather than 20 only because helpers and apprentices legally do much of the hands-on work under supervision.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls Deciding whether an existing service can carry a new heat pump, whether that 60-year-old cloth-wire branch circuit gets repaired or condemned, or how to safely energize when the shutdown window has already closed are calls made on incomplete information with fire and electrocution as the failure mode, though NEC tables and inspection bound the discretion enough to keep it at 14 rather than higher.
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 (17/20 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 (16/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (14/20) 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 43 of this occupation's 80 points (54%).
Embodiment (20/20) 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 90/100, still SAFE.
State adoption of NEC 2026/2029 cycles plus state licensing boards extending permit-and-sign-off requirements into currently exempt categories: EV charger installs (already required in CA per Title 24 and CALGreen), residential battery storage/ESS, and rooftop solar DC work. Also plausible: state boards writing rules that AI-generated load calcs or arc-flash studies require a licensed master electrician's stamp, mirroring the engineering boards' position on AI-generated drawings.
Task-mix shift as AI absorbs estimating, takeoffs, permit paperwork and code lookup: the residual day becomes troubleshooting intermittent faults, retrofit work in non-standard existing buildings, and commissioning of complex systems — the tier where the print does not match the wall. This raises the share of the job that is judgment-plus-hands without any new law.
NFPA 70E arc-flash risk assessment and energized-work permits placing the qualified-person determination explicitly on the individual electrician, plus OSHA enforcement treating that call as personally attributable. As data center, ESS and high-amperage EV infrastructure work grows, the consequential call (energize or not, is this de-energized and verified) concentrates in fewer named people.
Insurer-driven: property carriers requiring documented licensed-electrician installation for battery storage or EV charging as a condition of homeowner coverage, and utility interconnection agreements naming a licensed installer. This is a mandated preference rather than a taste preference, but it functions as buyer-side insistence on a specific human.
The limit. Already 80/100 with embodiment maxed and task_resistance near ceiling; realistic headroom is only a few points, concentrated in liability and named-accountability rules. The genuine downside risk is not robots but headcount per project: prefab assemblies, modular wiring harnesses, and AI-compressed office hours can shrink crew sizes and apprentice slots while leaving the licensed journeyman's score untouched — the register can stay SAFE while the occupation employs fewer people.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 36,550 | $79,020 +25% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 20,930 | $59,010 -7% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 20,610 | $73,810 +17% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 19,730 | $59,180 -6% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 17,720 | $102,350 +62% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 17,240 | $61,210 -3% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 16,580 | $75,930 +20% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 13,430 | $58,650 -7% |
| Kankakee, IL | 140 | $105,500 +67% |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 7,340 | $105,090 +66% |
| Mount Vernon-Anacortes, WA | 740 | $104,510 +65% |
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 80. 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.