Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products

Score — 24/100 resistance

Holding it up: embodiment (12/20). Weakest point: liability shield (1/20).

Five dimensions, 0–20 each, summed. Higher means more protected. The arithmetic is shown so you can check it: 5 + 12 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 24. · Scored 2026-08-11, and re-examined when evidence accumulates rather than on a schedule.

This occupation has already been through one. Headcount fell 36.7% between 2017 and 2025 — 39,810 to 25,180 — while the median wage held roughly flat in real terms (+ 17.4% after inflation). A job being commoditised usually loses pay along with headcount. One that shrinks by half while pay holds is leaving a specialist core behind, and the score above was assigned from the occupation title without sight of that history — so it may be describing the job this used to be rather than the people still doing it. Why this is a known limit.

Confidence: high · reviewed 2026-08-11 · how scoring works

What this job involves — and which parts are yours

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.

Active moats on the surviving side: embodiment

How to future-proof this job

• Move to the machine-tending side: learn to calibrate and troubleshoot optical sorters and weight graders so you're the person who keeps the line running, not the one it replaces.
• Pursue USDA licensed grader or state agricultural inspector work, where a certified human signs the official grade certificate.
• Get food-safety credentials (HACCP, PCQI) and shift toward quality-assurance sampling and audit prep in the packinghouse.
• Target commodities that resist mechanical sorting — soft fruit, heirloom or organic specialty crops, nursery stock — where hand-grading remains the standard.

Training paths for your skill gaps: MIT OpenCourseWare — finance and accounting free · edX — supply chain and inventory management free to audit · edX — operations management and process monitoring courses free to audit · Coursera — people management and team leadership specialisations free to audit · Coursera — customer service and client-facing skill courses free to audit · Coursera — work planning and personal productivity free to audit · Coursera — communication and interpersonal skills free to audit · OSHA Outreach Training — the 10- and 30-hour cards most employers ask for low · Apprenticeship.gov — industrial maintenance and millwright programs paid to train · Apprenticeship.gov — paid, employer-sponsored trade apprenticeships, searchable by trade and ZIP paid to train

All 35 skills ranked by how many jobs they open →

Where this experience transfers — occupations you could move toward

Computed from U.S. Dept. of Labor O*NET skill and knowledge profiles: high overlap with what you already do, a materially higher resistance score, no large jump in required training, and no licence you would have to start a new pipeline to get. Targets that pay meaningfully less, that are themselves COOKED, or whose own headcount is falling are excluded — a move into a shrinking trade is not an escape.

Where this work is, and what it pays there

BLS metro figures for 42 areas. The verdict above does not change by city — the rubric judges what the work involves, not where it happens — but pay and headcount do, and the national median hides a very wide range.

Percentages are against this occupation's national median of $35,730. Counts are jobs in that metro, not vacancies. Metros where the BLS suppressed the cell are absent rather than shown as zero.

Who is actually doing this — nobody, on the record

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 24. 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.

Read that as a gap in the reporting we can see, not proof of absence — the dispatch runs on English-language feeds and misses plenty. If you know of a case, tell us, or add a field report from inside the job.

Quick take — do you do this job?

Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.

Self-reported and unverified — a sentiment signal, not a survey. One response per person per occupation; you can change your answer.

Field reports — what people say has changed

No field reports yet. A written account takes a paragraph rather than a tap, goes to an editor before it appears, and is the one thing on this page the rubric cannot produce on its own.