EXPOSED
This catch-all covers mine, quarry, and well-site workers who don't fit the named extraction titles: rigging drill strings, tending pumps and conveyors, handling explosives support, servicing equipment in pits, tunnels, and wellpads. Almost none of that is text-on-a-screen work, so language AI barely touches it — but mining is one of the few sectors where physical automation is genuinely funded and shipping: autonomous haulage, remote-operated drills, and automated longwall systems have already cut headcount at large operators. The exposure here is capital-intensive robotics and consolidation, not chatbots, and MSHA/blasting certifications give some regulatory friction but no personal sign-off liability.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
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
+1.4% 6,300 → 6,400 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +1.4% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 51/100 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.
~700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
HandCagerCaserExtraBaggerBoomerCarmanPufferFlagmanLaborerLampmanRoadmanScraperYardmanAcidizerBottomerCementerDrainmanHandymanLightmanPlatemanSignalerSpraggerStoneman
The BLS uses Extraction Workers, All Other for work that doesn't fit any named occupation, so it covers roles that have little in common with each other. Two consequences worth knowing before you read anything below:
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Rigging and breaking out drill string, chaining down casing, clearing a jammed conveyor tail pulley, re-packing a mud pump — these are irregular, feel-dependent jobs on equipment that is never in the same position twice, which is why they sit at 15 rather than in the automatable band; the 5 points shaved off reflect that the repetitive haul-and-drill cycles adjacent to your work are already running driverless at Pilbara and Nevada-scale operations.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments An 18 is what you get when the workplace is a wellpad in freezing wind, a quarry bench after rain, or an underground drift with ground control, ventilation, and confined-space entry all in play — you are handling loads by hand in the presence of moving iron and pressurized fluid, and only the fact that some of this happens on a fixed, engineered site rather than pure open terrain keeps it off 20.
Certification preferred, not legally required MSHA Part 46/48 new-miner and annual refresher training and, where you handle shot support, ATF explosives possessor and state blaster licensing create real hiring friction — but none of that is a licence you personally sign work under; the mine foreman, competent person, and blaster-in-charge carry the citation and the sign-off, which caps you at 6 instead of the 11+ a personally liable licence-holder earns.
Meaningful discretion An 8 recognizes the calls you genuinely own — pulling back when the ground sounds wrong, refusing to work under an unsupported back, deciding a hoist rope or a wire sling is done — but most of the shift runs on written JSAs, permit-to-work, LOTO steps, and MSHA-mandated workplace exams, and anything ambiguous and expensive escalates to the foreman or engineer rather than resolving in your hands.
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 (6/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (4/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (8/20) 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 18 of this occupation's 51 points (35%).
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.
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 69/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: this SOC genuinely has two tiers. If autonomous haulage, remote drills and automated longwall absorb the routine tending and hauling, the surviving residual is fault diagnosis, unplanned rescue and recovery, explosives handling in irregular ground, and go/no-go calls on unstable faces — all judgment under ambiguity with no fallback. Headcount falls but the remaining role's accountability weight rises. Checkable via job postings shifting toward 'autonomous fleet field technician' and 'ground control' titles.
Same two-tier shift raises residual task resistance: the tasks left after automation (confined-space entry, explosives magazine handling, recovery of stuck or damaged equipment in unmapped ground) are precisely the ones robotics vendors exclude from scope. Not a new law — just what remains.
MSHA or state blasting authorities extending named-person accountability beyond the blaster-in-charge — e.g. a rule requiring a certified individual to be physically present and personally sign the shot report, magazine inventory, and post-blast inspection for every detonation, including remote-initiated ones. ATF magazine/responsible-person requirements and state blaster licensing already work this way; the gap is that automated or remotely initiated sequences have no clear named signer. A similar route: MSHA requiring a certified person to sign off on re-entry after ground-control events or gas readings rather than accepting sensor telemetry alone.
Post-fatality enforcement pattern — if MSHA or a state AG charges operators for autonomous-equipment incidents where no certified person had signed off on the exclusion zone, insurers and operators typically respond by mandating a named, certified on-site controller per autonomous fleet. Watch for autonomous-haulage-specific provisions in MSHA rulemaking or in mine-specific ground control plans.
Already near ceiling at 18; no realistic upward route beyond noting that underground unpredictable-ground work is the hardest residual.
The limit. Trust premium has no plausible route — buyers are mining and oil operators purchasing tonnage and uptime, and no customer pays extra for human-extracted ore. The real risk here is not scoring but volume: even if per-worker scores rise on judgment and liability, an already-tiny 5,540-worker SOC can shrink sharply through consolidation while each surviving role becomes more resistant. A higher score for the occupation is compatible with far fewer jobs in it.
| Lafayette, LA | 390 | $53,210 -7% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 260 | $64,740 +14% |
| New Orleans-Metairie, LA | 140 | $54,870 -4% |
| Baton Rouge, LA | 120 | $48,050 -16% |
| Wheeling, WV-OH | 120 | $62,970 +10% |
| Casper, WY | 110 | $51,160 -10% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 100 | $66,910 +17% |
| Beckley, WV | 70 | $70,120 +23% |
| Beckley, WV | 70 | $70,120 +23% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 100 | $66,910 +17% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 260 | $64,740 +14% |
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 51. 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.