EXPOSED
Most of the day — quoting, comparing carriers, filling applications, chasing renewals, answering coverage questions — is text and form work that comparison engines and direct-to-consumer carriers already do without an agent, and personal auto/home lines have been eroding for two decades. What holds is the state producer license, the E&O-backed recommendation on complex risk, and the fact that people buying life, disability, or a commercial package for a $4M business want a named human who picks up the phone at claim time. Scoring the modal agent (heavily personal-lines and captive); commercial and employee-benefits producers sit meaningfully safer than this number.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $50,940 → $62,280 -2.2% 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
+3.7%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 479,100 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +3.7% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
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.
~47,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
SolicitorBond WriterDebit AgentSales AgentBurial AgentPension AgentDistrict AgentEstate PlannerInsurance AgentSales AssociateInsurance BrokerSales SpecialistAccount SpecialistCompensation AgentInsurance ProducerInsurance SalesmanNetwork ContractorInsurance SolicitorSales Special AgentField RepresentativeInsurance SpecialistLife Insurance AgentSales RepresentativeEnrollment Specialist
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: embodiment .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Rating quotes, running an ACORD 125, comparing three carriers' declarations pages, and re-soliciting a 6-month renewal are all structured data entry that Progressive's and Lemonade's own funnels complete unattended — the 7 rather than 4 reflects the discovery conversation that surfaces the teenage driver, the home office, the boat, and the umbrella gap a form never asks about.
Some physical or field component A 5 covers the physical minority of the job: property walk-throughs and photos on a homeowners inspection, driving to a small-business owner's shop to write the BOP, and the community-lunch prospecting that still generates referrals — everything else happens from a desk on an AMS and a phone.
Licensed human required and personally liable An 11 sits at the floor of the licensed band because the state producer license, appointment, CE hours, and E&O policy are real and revocable, but the carrier underwrites and issues, so a denied claim usually lands on the policy language rather than on you unless you failed to offer or document a coverage.
Meaningful discretion A 9 reflects discretion within carrier appetite guides and underwriting rules: you choose liability limits, deductibles, endorsements, and whether to place a risk in the standard or E&S market, but you do not set rates, approve binds, or adjudicate the claim.
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 (7/20 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 (11/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) 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 33 of this occupation's 45 points (73%).
Embodiment (5/20) 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.
Real Estate Brokers EXPOSED
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 61/100, still EXPOSED.
State adoption/enforcement of the NAIC Suitability in Annuity Transactions Model Reg (best-interest standard, now in ~48 states) plus NAIC's AI Model Bulletin extended to producer-facing tools, requiring a named licensed producer to attest to and personally own suitability documentation for any AI-generated recommendation in life/annuity/LTC — making the signature non-delegable to a carrier's engine
Task-mix shift: personal auto/home quoting fully absorbed by carrier direct channels and embedded distribution, leaving the surviving book as commercial package, benefits, and complex life — risk-capture interviews, loss-run interpretation, coverage-gap arguments with underwriters. This raises the score only for the remaining agents, and shrinks headcount while doing it
Growth of the agent-as-claim-advocate role: when a denial lands, the producer who bound the policy is the person who fights the adjuster and eats the E&O exposure if a coverage gap was missed. Hard-market conditions in property (FL, CA, TX admitted-market withdrawals) and E&S placement push more decisions onto the producer's judgment about carrier solvency and non-admitted forms
A DOL fiduciary-style rule or state equivalent extending best-interest duty to rollover and life-insurance-as-investment sales, with E&O carriers (Utica, Swiss Re producer programs) writing exclusions for recommendations issued without a licensed producer's documented review
Commercial and benefits buyers formalizing willingness to pay for a named human — RFPs from mid-market employers specifying a dedicated licensed service team, and fee-based (not commission) advisory arrangements for benefits consulting under CAA 2021 broker compensation disclosure
The limit. Personal-lines captive agents have essentially no route up: the liability shield sits with the carrier, the product is commoditized, and no buyer pays extra for a human to sell them a $1,400 auto policy. The levers above mostly describe commercial/benefits producers, who are a different job wearing the same SOC code.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 21,280 | $80,620 +29% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 15,800 | $59,510 -4% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 14,680 | $76,870 +23% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 14,160 | $60,260 -3% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 11,870 | $69,240 +11% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 9,660 | $75,990 +22% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 9,020 | $61,570 -1% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 8,750 | $60,820 -2% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 4,860 | $95,640 +54% |
| Fond du Lac, WI | 120 | $95,110 +53% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 6,750 | $84,670 +36% |
Asia Insurance Review reports that South Korean insurer Hanwha Life has rolled out a generative AI tool to its entire workforce.
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.