EXPOSED
Helping blasters and drill operators — hauling and setting up drill rods, cleaning and lubricating equipment, loading blast holes, hand-clearing rock and debris at mines, quarries, and well sites — is physical work in genuinely uncontrolled terrain that language models cannot touch. The real threat is not AI but mechanization: automated drill rigs, autonomous haulage, and remote-operated equipment strip out the helper tier first, and the occupation is already tiny (6,700 jobs) and cyclical with commodity prices. No license protects the role and the work is procedural under a supervisor's direction, so there is no judgment or accountability moat.
Nearly all of this fall was the 2020 shock. It has been climbing back since.
Median pay $37,120 → $47,730 +2.9% 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
-1.7% 7,000 → 6,900 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -1.7% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
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.
PowdermanRoughneckOre DiggerSalt MinerCoal LoaderJack SetterDerrick HandDrill HelperMine LaborerMiner HelperMining HelperPumper HelperRoof ObserverRotary HelperTunnel MuckerBlaster HelperDerrick HelperDriller HelperMachine HelperPowder CarrierShooter HelperBlasting HelperHammerer HelperMiner Assistant
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Tramming drill steel to the face, swabbing and lubricating jackleg drills, tamping stemming into loaded blast holes and barring down loose rock are tasks no software touches — the 15 rather than 18 reflects that the helper tier is the first thing an autonomous drill rig or remote-operated loader eliminates outright, so the tasks resist digitisation but not mechanization.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work in pit benches, muck piles, and wellpad cellars where footing shifts, rock falls, and dust and diesel are ambient — an 18 rather than 20 only because some of the shift is spent in shops staging rods, bits, and blasting supplies rather than at the face.
No licence, no signature requirement MSHA Part 46/48 new-miner training and a state blaster's certificate held by the person you assist are the credentials in play; you hold none of them, and the licensed blaster-in-charge signs the shot report and owns the misfire, which puts this at 3 rather than 0 only because required safety training exists at all.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Hole depth, powder factor, delay pattern, and stemming length come off the blast design and the driller's call; your discretion is limited to noticing a bootleg or loose brow and calling it out, which is why this sits at 4 rather than 8.
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 (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (4/20) 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 10 of this occupation's 43 points (23%).
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 55/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift as automated rigs and autonomous haulage take routine hauling and tramming: the remaining helper work concentrates in non-routine tasks machines handle poorly — hand-clearing misfires and bootlegs, dealing with wet or collapsing holes, rigging in irregular benches and underground faces. Genuine two-tier structure exists here
MSHA or ATF explosives rules requiring a second certified person physically present at the blast hole during loading and tie-in (Part 56/57 blaster-assistant certification with named responsibility on the shot report), rather than allowing a lone licensed blaster with remote-loading equipment
Union or state contract language making the helper an authorized stop-work party — e.g. UMWA/USW safety-representative clauses or MSHA miner's-representative status extended so a helper can halt loading on observed hazard, with the call documented
Growth of the remaining work in confined, unmapped, or degraded environments (underground metal mines, abandoned well plug-and-abandonment under the federal orphan-well program) where autonomous equipment has no reliable localization; fewer bench-quarry helper jobs, more unstructured-site ones
The limit. Even with all of these, the occupation stays exposed: the pressure is mechanization of the helper tier, not language models, and 6,700 cyclical jobs give the occupation almost no lobbying weight to secure a certification moat. No plausible route to a trust premium — buyers are mine operators purchasing tonnage, and no one pays extra for a human helper.
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 190 | $51,750 +8% |
| Bakersfield-Delano, CA | 170 | $51,060 +7% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 170 | $60,470 +27% |
| Midland, TX | 150 | $42,810 -10% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 110 | $43,940 -8% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 100 | $47,730 +0% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 90 | $46,890 -2% |
| Odessa, TX | 70 | $39,480 -17% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 170 | $60,470 +27% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 190 | $51,750 +8% |
| Bakersfield-Delano, CA | 170 | $51,060 +7% |
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 43. 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.