{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/lathe-and-turning-machine-tool-setters-operators-and-tenders-metal-and-plastic/", "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": "Lathe and Turning Machine Tool Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal and Plastic", "soc_code": "51-4034", "category": "Production", "us_employment": 16710, "median_annual_wage": 50620 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 35, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 10, "embodiment": 14, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 3, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Loading a bar feeder and pressing cycle-start is already lights-out work, but nobody has automated indicating a four-jaw chuck to a half-thou, hearing a boring bar start to chatter and dropping feed on the fly, or re-shimming a soft jaw because the casting came in oversize — the split between those two halves of your shift is what puts this at 10 and not 4 or 15.", "embodiment": "You are inside the machine envelope with a dial indicator, changing inserts and toolholders, blowing out chips, dealing with coolant mist and hot swarf, and hauling bar stock — 14 rather than 18 because it's your own guarded machine on a shop floor, not a rooftop or a trench where conditions change on you.", "liability_shield": "No licence, no stamp, no certificate anyone checks: a shop can hire you Monday on a trial run, and when a shaft goes out of tolerance the liability sits with the QC sign-off and the company's contract, not your name — the 1 rather than 0 is only the OSHA lockout/tagout duty you personally carry at the machine.", "trust_premium": "The turned part ships in a bin and the customer never learns who ran it; the 3 reflects that a programmer or shift lead comes to you specifically when a job won't hold size, which is internal reputation, not a client relationship that follows you.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide when to bump an offset, when an insert is done, and when to stop the run and call it scrap — real calls with real money in them, but bounded by the print, the tolerance block, and the setup sheet, which is why this is 7 and not the 14+ of someone deciding what the tolerance should be." }, "rationale": "The tending tier — loading bar stock, cycling parts, gauging with calipers and micrometers, logging counts — is exactly what bar feeders, robotic loaders, in-process probing, and lights-out CNC cells already absorb, and CAM software plus AI now drafts G-code and tooling strategies that operators once wrote by hand. What holds is the setup and troubleshooting tier: fixturing an odd part, dialing tool offsets, reading chatter and chip color, chasing a tolerance drift on a live job, and swapping inserts on a machine that doesn't care what the program says. The modal worker here straddles both tiers, which is why the number sits near the border rather than in the safe zone.", "outlook": "Employment keeps shrinking as automated cells and multitasking machines consolidate work, but shops will still pay well for setters who can fixture, program, and troubleshoot a job nobody has run before.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: as bar feeders, robotic loaders and in-process probing absorb loading/gauging/counting, the surviving job is setup, fixturing odd geometries, tool offset dial-in and live troubleshooting (chatter, chip color, tolerance drift). A shop that moves to lights-out spindles and retains one setter per several machines has raised the per-worker judgment content even as headcount falls.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Growth of low-volume/high-mix work — aerospace spares, medical implant one-offs, defense reshoring under DoD Industrial Base programs — where setup time dominates cycle time and no fixture or program is reused, keeps the non-automatable fraction high.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Shift toward large-diameter, long-bar, or exotic-alloy turning (titanium, Inconel) where workholding is manual, deflection and thermal growth are felt not measured, and robot cells are uneconomic at the batch size.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "AS9100/NADCAP and FDA 21 CFR 820 audit practice already requires a named individual to sign first-article inspection and setup approval sheets. If prime contractors extend the requirement to explicitly bar AI-generated or unverified programs from being run without a named setter's signed process verification — the way Boeing and Rolls-Royce supplier quality clauses have tightened on process control — the signature becomes a job-defining requirement rather than paperwork.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Where the setter owns the call to scrap, rework, or accept a drifting lot on a $40k forged blank, and that call is logged against their name in the MES for CAPA traceability, the accountability is real. Formalizing scrap-disposition authority at the setter level (rather than escalating to a quality engineer) raises this.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route — buyers of turned parts specify tolerance, material cert and PPAP, not human authorship, and no customer pays a premium for hand-cranked chips. Even with every lever pulled, this stays a shrinking-headcount occupation: the levers raise the value of the workers who remain, not the number of them." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 29620, "wage": 38580 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 29510, "wage": 39180 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 28070, "wage": 40100 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 23710, "wage": 41380 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 19690, "wage": 44240 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 19410, "wage": 47020 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 19560, "wage": 47110 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 18970, "wage": 48620 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 16710, "wage": 50620 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -43.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "control-and-valve-installers-and-repairers-except-mechanical-door", "title": "Control and Valve Installers and Repairers, Except Mechanical Door", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 68, "median_wage": 74340, "overlap": 76, "skills_to_close": [ "Repairing", "Active Learning", "Critical Thinking", "Writing" ] }, { "slug": "riggers", "title": "Riggers", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 70, "median_wage": 62640, "overlap": 75, "skills_to_close": [ "Active Learning", "Coordination", "Critical Thinking", "Management of Personnel Resources" ] }, { "slug": "sheet-metal-workers", "title": "Sheet Metal Workers", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 61800, "overlap": 73, "skills_to_close": [ "Active Learning", "Mathematics", "Instructing", "Installation" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }