SAFE
The job is loading boreholes, wiring initiation systems, judging rock face conditions, and calling the shot on a live site — none of that is screen work, and robotics is nowhere near handling primed detonators in a quarry. Software already helps with blast pattern design, vibration modeling, and regulatory paperwork, and that share will grow. But federal ATF licensing, state blaster certification, and personal liability for flyrock, misfires, and neighboring structures keep a named human on the pad.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
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
-0.9% 5,800 → 5,800 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, but shrinking anyway
The work resists current AI, yet the BLS projects -0.9% by 2034. Whatever is shrinking this occupation, the evidence does not point to automation — demand, demographics, offshoring and industry decline all shrink jobs that no machine could do.
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.
~500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
FirerMinerRobberBlasterChargerShooterDriftmanShot ManDobie ManDynamiterNitro ManPowdermanPerforatorPillar ManShot FirerTunnel ManFuse CutterHigh ScalerShotblasterTorpedo ManWell BlowerBlast SetterCoal ShooterDobie Worker
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Blast design software can generate the pattern and predict fragmentation, but someone still has to walk the face, measure actual burden and stemming depth hole by hole, adjust for a mud seam or a void the drill log missed, prime the cast boosters, and tie in the surface delays — the 15 rather than 18 reflects that the paperwork, seismograph logs, and pattern layout are already largely digital.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are in an open pit or a road cut in whatever weather, lowering explosives into wet 4-inch holes, dealing with hot holes and misfires by hand, hauling day boxes and magazines, and physically clearing and guarding the blast radius before you push the button — there is no controlled bay version of this job.
Licensed human required and personally liable An ATF federal explosives license or permit plus a state blaster-in-charge certificate is legally required to possess and shoot, your name goes on the blast log and the shot report, and if flyrock crosses a property line or a neighbor's foundation cracks it is your certificate that gets pulled and your deposition that gets taken under state mining and DOT rules.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls The call to shoot, delay, or stand down on a face that looks loose, and the decision on how to approach a suspected misfire, are made in minutes with incomplete geology and no chance to revise once the shot is fired — 30 CFR and state rules set the perimeter but not the judgment inside it.
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 (15/20 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 (17/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (9/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (17/20) 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 77 points (56%).
Embodiment (19/20) 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 83/100, still SAFE.
Genuine two-tier job: if pattern design, vibration/airblast modeling, pre-blast survey documentation, and regulatory filings are absorbed by software, the residual day is loading primed holes, reading an actual rock face for voids and seams, and aborting a shot — the tier that stays. Score rises by subtraction rather than by any new capability barrier.
An ATF or MSHA rulemaking (or state fire marshal/blaster-certification board rule) that explicitly names the licensed blaster-in-charge as the required signer for software-generated blast designs and shot reports, with personal certificate revocation for flyrock or misfire events — i.e., closing the gap where a design tool's output could travel unsigned. Several state blasting programs (e.g., PA DEP, Ohio, Kentucky surface-mine rules) already tie seismograph records and shot logs to a named certified blaster; extending that signature duty to AI-produced pattern designs and vibration predictions would push this toward ceiling.
If insurers underwriting blasting near occupied structures require a documented, named-human abort authority and pre-shot condition attestation as a policy condition (as some construction surety and pollution/vibration liability carriers already do for urban demolition), the abort call becomes a contractually owned consequential decision rather than an informal one.
The limit. Already 77 with embodiment at 19 and two institutional dimensions near the top — realistic headroom is a few points at most. Trust premium is the dead end: quarry operators, pipeline contractors, and demolition GCs buy a permitted shot at a price, not a human artisan, so there is no route to buyers paying specifically for a person. The real risk to this occupation is not displacement but shrinking demand from fewer shots per site and crew consolidation, which the register does not score.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 180 | $55,830 -9% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 120 | $100,520 +64% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 90 | $45,180 -26% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 80 | $70,200 +14% |
| Urban Honolulu, HI | 80 | $66,850 +9% |
| Bakersfield-Delano, CA | 60 | $92,290 +50% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 60 | $86,900 +42% |
| Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN | 60 | $27,400 -55% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 120 | $100,520 +64% |
| Bakersfield-Delano, CA | 60 | $92,290 +50% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 60 | $86,900 +42% |
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 77. 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.