EXPOSED
Pulling wire through joists, drilling studs, cutting and bending conduit, hauling material, and cleaning up job sites are physical tasks in cluttered, variable spaces that no current robot handles at cost. The exposure isn't AI doing the work — it's that helpers hold no license, sign nothing, and own no decisions, so their pay and headcount depend entirely on how many licensed electricians the market employs and how much prefab/modular assembly moves labor off-site. This is a stepping-stone title, and the whole value of the job is whether you convert it into a journeyman card.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $32,830 → $42,670 +4.0% in real terms
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. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+0.2% 66,600 → 66,700 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +0.2% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 48/100 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.
~6,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
HelperApprenticeShop HelperElectrical HelperElectrician HelperHouse Wirer HelperWireman ApprenticeInstallation HelperElectrical AssistantElectrician's HelperTower Erector HelperElectrical ApprenticeElectrician AssistantElectrician ApprenticeElectrician's AssistantStage Electrician HelperInside Wireman ApprenticeMarine Electrician HelperElectrical Sign Wirer HelperProtective Signal Repairer HelperMaterial and Supply Yard AssistantProtective Signal Installer HelperAutomotive Electrician Helper (Auto Electrician Helper)E and I Apprentice (Electrical and Instrumentation Apprentice)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Fishing wire through a finished ceiling, bending 3/4 EMT around a beam that isn't where the drawing said, and digging trenches for service runs are tasks where every repetition differs by inches and no vision system yet handles the reach-into-a-dark-joist-bay problem at anything like a helper's wage — hence 16, not lower.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work off ladders and lifts in unconditioned buildings, crawl in attics and crawlspaces, carry 500-foot spools and 10-foot sticks of conduit, and do it around live circuits and other trades' debris — that's uncontrolled site work, and only the small share of shop or prefab-bench time keeps it off 20.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licenses helpers; you work under a journeyman or master's card, your work is inspected against their name on the permit, and the only credential you might carry is OSHA 10 — which stops nobody from replacing you.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs You're told where to drill, what gauge to pull, and how high to set the boxes; the discretion left to you is spotting that a stud has a plumbing line behind it or that a cord is frayed and saying so — real, but not a call anyone will hold you to.
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 (16/20 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 (4/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (5/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (5/20) 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 14 of this occupation's 48 points (29%).
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.
Solar Photovoltaic Installers EXPOSED
Riggers SAFE
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 60/100, still EXPOSED.
State electrical-trainee registration plus enforced apprentice-to-journeyman ratio rules (Washington's 01/02 trainee cards, Oregon's and Wisconsin's ratio statutes) make an unlicensed helper a legally required, countable body on the crew rather than optional labor — a contractor cannot staff up licensed hours without them. Broader adoption or tightened enforcement of ratio rules, plus IRA/CHIPS prevailing-wage rules (Treasury final rule, June 2024) requiring 12.5-15% of total labor hours be performed by registered apprentices on tax-credit-eligible projects, converts helper headcount into a compliance line item.
Task-mix shift as prefab absorbs the routine tier: new-build repetitive rough-in (identical multifamily units, straight conduit runs, panel assemblies) moves to controlled off-site shops, leaving field helper work concentrated in retrofit, service upgrades, EV-charger and panel-swap work in existing occupied buildings where no two walls are the same. The remaining tier is genuinely less mechanizable than the tier being removed.
Project Labor Agreements on federal construction over $35M (FAR rule effective Jan 2024) and state/utility-scale solar PLAs that specify registered-apprentice utilization percentages and prohibit substituting unregistered helpers — if these survive litigation and expand to data-center and transmission buildout, apprentice slots become contractually mandated.
Jurisdictions that let registered trainees perform and initial specific documented steps under indirect rather than direct supervision — e.g., rules permitting a second-year trainee to work unsupervised on limited residential tasks, or utility interconnection paperwork requiring a named installer on record for each EVSE/PV commissioning — attach an identifiable person to a consequential call.
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: customers buy the licensed contractor's name and never learn who pulled the wire, and no plausible mechanism makes a homeowner pay extra for a human helper specifically. Also note the liability levers protect the slot, not the person — every one of them is conditioned on the helper being a *registered* apprentice or trainee, so an unregistered helper captures none of the gain. Embodiment is the current floor of this score and prefab pushes it down, not up.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 4,660 | $47,800 +12% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,200 | $44,490 +4% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 1,810 | $44,840 +5% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,630 | $40,220 -6% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 1,500 | $42,670 +0% |
| Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN | 1,330 | $46,240 +8% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 1,320 | $47,470 +11% |
| San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR | 1,280 | $26,310 -38% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 350 | $76,100 +78% |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 110 | $64,560 +51% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 550 | $61,260 +44% |
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 48. 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.