EXPOSED
A large share of the job is document work AI already handles well: parsing collective bargaining agreements, drafting grievance responses, summarizing arbitration precedent, tracking wage and benefit comparables, and writing policy language. What does not automate is sitting across a table from a union bargaining committee, reading the room during a strike threat, and owning the concession you just made. The modal worker splits time between contract administration (exposed) and live negotiation and grievance handling (durable), and headcount pressure will land on the administration half.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $69,020 → $95,420 +10.6% 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
-0.1% 65,400 → 65,400 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -0.1% 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.
~5,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
ConciliatorUnion StewardBusiness AgentLabor MediatorLabor OrganizerUnion OrganizerLabor SpecialistGrievance ManagerLabor ConciliatorContract NegotiatorPersonnel ArbitratorPersonnel NegotiatorRelations SpecialistArbitration SpecialistLabor Contract AnalystLabor Relations WorkerBusiness RepresentativeLabor Relations AnalystEmployee Relations PartnerLabor Relations ConsultantLabor Relations NegotiatorLabor Relations SpecialistIndustrial Relations WorkerIndustrial Relations Analyst
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier At 9, the split is real: the contract-interpretation memos, Article-by-Article redlines, grievance logs, and NLRB filing prep that fill most weeks are text-in/text-out work a model does competently, while the actual table sessions, caucus strategy, and Weingarten-rights investigatory interviews stay human — which is why this sits at 9 rather than the 4 of a pure document analyst or the 15 of a chief negotiator who does nothing but bargain.
Some physical or field component The 5 reflects that you are not on a screen exclusively — you are in plant break rooms for grievance step meetings, walking the floor to see the disputed job assignment, and in hotel conference rooms for multi-day bargaining — but nothing you touch requires manual skill or exposes you to an uncontrolled site, so it lands just above desk-only rather than in the field band.
No licence, no signature requirement A 3 is correct because nothing in the LMRA or NLRA requires you to hold a licence: SHRM-CP or the LRP credential is resume decoration, unfair labor practice charges are filed against the employer as a legal entity, and when a settlement goes wrong it is the company's outside labor counsel — a member of the bar — who carries the professional exposure, not you.
Meaningful discretion 13 fits because you decide unilaterally whether to settle a discharge grievance or take it to arbitration, what the employer's opening economic package is, and whether conduct crosses into a Section 8(a)(5) refusal to bargain — genuinely consequential ambiguous calls — but the final ratification, the strike authorization, and the litigate-or-settle decision go up to a VP or general counsel, keeping you below the band reserved for people whose signature is the last one.
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 (9/20 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 (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) 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 29 of this occupation's 43 points (67%).
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.
Law Teachers, Postsecondary 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 57/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift: if contract administration (CBA parsing, comparables tracking, grievance drafting, policy language) is absorbed by AI, the surviving role is live bargaining, strike contingency, and grievance settlement authority — genuinely two-tier work, so the residual job is the judgment tier even as headcount falls
If national unions adopt bargaining-table policies refusing to negotiate against AI-generated proposals or AI-present sessions — the WGA/SAG-AFTRA 2023 AI clauses and the Teamsters' contract language on automation are the template — employers must staff a named human negotiator regardless of cost
If NLRB or arbitrators treat unattributed AI-drafted bargaining communications as evidence of bad-faith or surface bargaining under NLRA 8(a)(5), a named human must own each proposal and concession on the record
If duty-of-fair-representation suits or state public-sector labor boards (e.g. PERB rules) require a designated human agent of record for grievance dispositions and interest arbitration filings, with personal exposure for the disposition
The limit. No license exists for this occupation and none is being proposed, so liability_shield has a low ceiling; the realistic path is a smaller, more senior negotiation-only role rather than a protected one.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 6,930 | $107,470 +13% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 3,300 | $102,980 +8% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 3,090 | $103,570 +9% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 2,000 | $124,400 +30% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,990 | $119,200 +25% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 1,730 | $99,840 +5% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 1,300 | $101,270 +6% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,280 | $118,520 +24% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 510 | $133,270 +40% |
| Vallejo, CA | 100 | $131,680 +38% |
| Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | 40 | $128,320 +34% |
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.