EXPOSED
The modal worker runs a physical venue — a water park, campground, fitness center, ski area, event hall — walking the floor, opening and closing, handling guest incidents, and directing a mostly part-time, high-turnover staff. AI already eats the back-office half: staff scheduling, budget tracking, ticketing reports, marketing copy, vendor emails, attendance forecasting. What survives is on-site safety accountability, live crisis calls during an incident or weather closure, and being the person who hires, fires, and motivates a seasonal crew.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
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.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+7.7% 43,200 → 46,500 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +7.7% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 56/100 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.
~5,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Club ManagerPark ManagerPool ManagerCamp DirectorClub DirectorEvent ManagerVenue ManagerAquatics ManagerRides SupervisorAquatics DirectorBoat Club ManagerEvent CoordinatorGolf Club ManagerActivities ManagerRecreation ManagerSki Resort ManagerTheme Park ManagerExperiences ManagerGolf Course ManagerMarina Club ManagerPark SuperintendentRecreation DirectorTennis Club ManagerFitness Club Manager
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier At 12 rather than 8, the split is roughly even: labor scheduling against forecasted gate, P&L variance reports, season-pass pricing, party-booking confirmations and Facebook promos are already largely software-driven, but nothing digital walks the pool deck at close, runs the lightning-evacuation of a 400-person water park, or talks down a parent whose kid got hurt on the inflatable — and those are the tasks that define whether the day went well.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments A 14 reflects that the job is spent in the venue itself — lift lines, campground loops, locker rooms, the ropes course — inspecting attractions before opening, checking chlorine logs and ride restraints, and responding on foot to incidents in weather you don't control; it stops short of 18 because a real share of the week is budget, payroll and vendor work done sitting at a desk in the office behind the front counter.
Certification preferred, not legally required A 5 is right because the credentials involved — CPR/first aid, Certified Pool Operator, food-handler, sometimes a ski-patrol or lifeguard-instructor card — are operational requirements the employer can staff around, and when an injury claim lands it is the LLC and its insurer named, not you personally holding a license a board can pull.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls A 14 is earned by the calls with no procedure to hide behind: closing the slides on marginal weather and eating the revenue, deciding an intoxicated guest leaves, judging whether a head-injury report goes to EMS and the insurer, and firing a popular staffer mid-season — each made in minutes, alone, with the incident report bearing your signature.
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 (12/20 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 (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (11/20) 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 30 of this occupation's 56 points (54%).
Embodiment (14/20) 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.
Chief Executives 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 76/100 — SAFE.
Insurer-driven rather than statutory: general-liability carriers for water parks, trampoline parks and campgrounds conditioning coverage on a named credentialed manager-on-duty log signature per operating shift, with coverage voided if the log is autogenerated. Already visible in some aquatic and adventure-park policy endorsements.
Task-mix shift: once scheduling, forecasting, ticketing analytics and vendor correspondence are fully handled by venue-management software, the residual role is almost entirely the ambiguous calls — evacuate for lightning or not, close a slide after a near-miss, eject a guest, decide whether a seasonal hire is safe to be on the tower. The score rises because the denominator shrinks, not because new duties appear.
Same two-tier shift as above, but note the ceiling: the surviving judgment tier is a smaller number of hours, so resistance per remaining hour rises while headcount per venue can fall. Watch for consolidation of the role across multiple sites under one 'area manager'.
State amusement-ride and aquatic-facility codes increasingly name a specific on-site certified individual as the accountable operator — e.g. state pool codes requiring a Certified Pool Operator (CPO/AFO) physically present during operating hours, and ASTM F24-derived state ride-inspection rules requiring a named qualified ride operator supervisor to sign daily pre-opening inspection logs. If more states move that signature from 'the operator' (the corporate entity) to a named, personally-liable certificate holder present on premises — as some ski-area and zipline/challenge-course statutes already do under ACCT standards — the shield rises materially.
Post-incident regulatory response raising mandated physical presence — e.g. state legislation after a drowning or ride fatality requiring documented walkthrough frequency, ratio-based supervisory presence, or in-person incident command. This pattern has followed specific fatalities in trampoline-park and waterslide legislation in several states.
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: guests buy the attraction, not the manager, and almost never know who runs the venue. The upside here is nearly all liability and presence mandates, which protect the function without protecting the headcount — one credentialed signer can cover a site that used to need three managers.
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,530 | $80,570 +1% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,410 | $94,390 +19% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,200 | $78,200 -2% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,070 | $83,020 +4% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 1,020 | $81,570 +3% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 900 | $96,110 +21% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 780 | $94,290 +19% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 690 | $78,670 -1% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 320 | $123,780 +56% |
| Naples-Marco Island, FL | 90 | $120,410 +51% |
| Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA | 30 | $116,000 +46% |
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 56. 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.