EXPOSED
The modal security supervisor spends most of the day physically on a site — walking posts, briefing officers, responding to incidents, de-escalating confrontations, coordinating with police and building management — which robotics and language models cannot do. The paperwork layer (shift scheduling, post orders, incident report drafting, payroll and compliance logs, camera-footage review triage) is squarely automatable and is already being compressed by workforce-management software and video analytics. Most states license the officers and often the supervisor, but that shield is thin and regulatory rather than a personal-liability signature like a physician's or engineer's.
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
+2.7% 71,900 → 73,800 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +2.7% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 60/100 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.
~7,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Guard ChiefGuard CaptainSecurity ChiefSite SupervisorGuard SupervisorOfficer SergeantSecurity ManagerShift SupervisorSafety SupervisorSecurity DirectorCampus Safety ChiefSecurity LieutenantSecurity SupervisorArmed Site SupervisorProtection SupervisorPublic Safety ManagerPublic Safety SupervisorSecurity Site SupervisorArmed Security SupervisorInternal Security ManagerSecurity Field SupervisorSecurity Floor SupervisorSecurity Guard SupervisorSecurity Shift Supervisor
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Scheduling coverage across three shifts, generating post orders, compiling incident reports and triaging hours of camera footage are all being absorbed by Trackforce/Silvertrac-type platforms and video analytics, which is why this sits at 13 rather than 17 — but the parts that keep it above the midpoint (standing a post handover, walking a perimeter at 3am with a new officer, physically separating two people in a lobby) have no software substitute.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are on-site in parking structures, loading docks, hospital ERs and construction perimeters in whatever weather, responding to alarms on foot and putting hands on people during an escort or restraint — a 15 rather than 18 only because a meaningful slice of the week is spent in a console room or office doing rosters and reports.
Certification preferred, not legally required Most states require a guard card and many require a separate supervisor or qualified-manager registration (California's PPO qualified manager, New York's 47-hour supervisor training), so the 8 reflects a real statutory gate — but the exposure for a bad use-of-force call typically lands on the contract security firm and its insurer, not on your personal licence in the way a nurse's RN or a PI's licence is personally revocable and suable.
Meaningful discretion You decide in seconds whether to detain, whether to call 911, whether an intoxicated person gets escorted or arrested, and whether to pull an officer off a post mid-shift — real discretion with legal and physical consequences, held to 13 because post orders, client escalation trees and company use-of-force policy define the outer boundaries of most of those calls before you make them.
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 (13/20 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 (8/20) 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 (13/20) 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 32 of this occupation's 60 points (53%).
Embodiment (15/20) 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 78/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: if scheduling, report drafting and camera triage are absorbed by workforce-management and video-analytics software, the residual role concentrates into use-of-force decisions, detain/release calls, evacuation and active-threat command, and police handoff — all irreducibly ambiguous and consequential. Watch for job postings that drop administrative duties and add incident-command certification (ICS-100/200).
Same two-tier shift: the automatable paperwork tier leaving means the measured day is de-escalation, officer discipline, training delivery, and live incident response. Task_resistance rises arithmetically even as capability improves — but note this also shrinks headcount per site, so the occupation gets more resistant and smaller at once.
State licensing boards (e.g., California BSIS, New York DCJS, Texas DPS PSB) extending the existing qualified-manager/licensee model so that a named, personally licensed supervisor must sign off on use-of-force incident reports, detention/citizen's-arrest records, and armed-post assignments — with the signature attaching personal license revocation exposure. California already requires a Qualified Manager for each PPO license; making incident-level countersignature and AI-generated report attestation part of that duty is a narrow, visible rule change.
Insurer requirements: carriers writing security-contractor E&O/general liability mandating a named supervisor of record on site for armed or crowd-control posts as a policy condition, mirroring how construction GL demands a qualified competent person. Also plausible via post-incident litigation making the supervisor's documented on-scene judgment the defensible fact.
Buyer-side: corporate and school-district security RFPs specifying a named human supervisor physically present per shift rather than a remote monitoring center — driven by post-incident liability and by parent/tenant pressure after high-profile failures of remote-monitored sites. Union contracts (SEIU Local 32BJ, which represents building security in NYC) bargaining supervisor-to-officer ratio floors would harden this.
The limit. Even with the licensing and buyer-side levers, this occupation is capped well below professions with true personal-signature liability: security supervision is a cost center, procurement is price-driven, and remote monitoring centers plus analytics reduce the number of supervisors needed per contract regardless of how resistant each remaining role becomes. The realistic top is roughly the mid-70s, with fewer people in it.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 7,310 | $59,890 +7% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,240 | $49,900 -11% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 2,900 | $47,720 -15% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,400 | $73,490 +31% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 2,240 | $53,160 -5% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,160 | $46,910 -16% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,120 | $58,990 +5% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 1,960 | $48,650 -13% |
| Chattanooga, TN-GA | 180 | $100,340 +79% |
| Lafayette-West Lafayette, IN | 40 | $89,610 +60% |
| Norwich-New London-Willimantic, CT | 30 | $85,540 +53% |
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 60. 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.