{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/grounds-maintenance-workers-all-other/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Grounds Maintenance Workers, All Other", "soc_code": "37-3019", "category": "Facilities", "us_employment": 13630, "median_annual_wage": 46860 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 51, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 16, "embodiment": 18, "liability_shield": 4, "trust_premium": 6, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Setting a string trimmer against a chain-link fence line, digging out a broken sprinkler lateral, raking leaves out of shrub beds, and dragging limbs to a chipper are physical sequences no software executes — the 16 rather than 19 reflects that wide, flat turf mowing and irrigation-timer setpoints are already being handed to autonomous mowers and smart controllers.", "embodiment": "You work in whatever weather the day brings, on slopes, in mulch beds, around traffic and pedestrians, carrying blowers and handling fuel, with buried lines and stumps you cannot see until you hit them — that is an uncontrolled environment by any definition, short of 20 only because much of the site is at least mapped and repeat-visited.", "liability_shield": "No licence gates entry to this work; the pesticide applicator card that some crews carry sits with one certified person and the 4 acknowledges that most crew members can be hired and put on a mower the same week.", "trust_premium": "A regular property or campus route means the client knows your face and tells you which beds not to cut back, but the contract follows the price and the company name, not you personally — that recurring familiarity is what lifts this above anonymous output.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide when the ground is too saturated to drive on, whether a limb is safe to cut or needs a tree service, and how hard to cut back a shrub this late in the season, but the scope, schedule, and specs come down from a supervisor or contract scope of work." }, "rationale": "Almost nothing in this job is text or screen work — trimming, edging, hauling debris, spreading mulch, clearing storm damage, and repairing irrigation heads happen outdoors on uneven ground where today's robotics still struggles. What AI does touch is the paperwork around the work: route scheduling, treatment logs, estimates, and irrigation-timer optimization. The real displacement pressure here is cheap autonomous mowers on large open turf and general wage competition, not language models.", "outlook": "Autonomous mowers will absorb the big-open-turf hours over the next decade, pushing crews toward trimming, irrigation repair, planting, and storm response — fewer bodies per acre, but the detail work stays human.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State pesticide/herbicide applicator licensing already requires a certified applicator (EPA 40 CFR 171, state DoA programs) to sign application records; if grounds crews shift toward roles where the licensed applicator personally signs off on every treatment — including any robot- or drone-applied product — the license attaches to the person, not the machine. Drone-applied pesticide work already requires both Part 137 and applicator certification.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Backflow-prevention and irrigation-system certification (e.g., state cross-connection control rules, ASSE/ABPA tester certification) requires a named certified tester to submit annual test reports to the water utility; if municipalities extend mandatory annual testing and reporting to more commercial/HOA sites, more of this workforce carries personal sign-off.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Tree and storm-damage work: if ISA Certified Arborist or TRAQ (Tree Risk Assessment Qualification) credentials become an insurer or municipal contract requirement for hazard-tree calls — some utility and city contracts already specify TRAQ — the role owns a consequential, documented risk call under ambiguity.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: autonomous mowers take the open-turf tier, leaving edging around obstacles, storm cleanup, irrigation repair, planting-bed work, and hardscape repair — the genuinely unstructured tier. This raises the share of the day AI/robotics cannot do without any new law.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Already near ceiling; only rises in the sense that the residual work concentrates in the least structured environments (slopes, root zones, debris fields) where wheeled autonomy is excluded.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route — buyers of grounds maintenance are facilities managers and HOAs procuring on price per square foot, and there is no consumer market that pays extra for a human to spread mulch. The credential levers (applicator, backflow, TRAQ) also only attach to a minority of these 13,630 workers; the median crew member without a license gains nothing from them, and wage competition, not AI, remains the binding pressure." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 12840, "wage": 30060 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 14470, "wage": 30420 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 14310, "wage": 32090 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 14310, "wage": 34210 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 15770, "wage": 36540 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 16050, "wage": 39520 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 11980, "wage": 43310 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 13580, "wage": 43410 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 13630, "wage": 46860 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 6.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }