{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/material-moving-workers-all-other/", "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": "Material Moving Workers, All Other", "soc_code": "53-7199", "category": "Transportation", "us_employment": 23480, "median_annual_wage": 41800 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 38, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 13, "embodiment": 16, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 3, "judgment_accountability": 4 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Clearing a jammed chute by hand, re-slinging an awkward load that won't sit on a pallet, or shifting product through a plant whose aisles were laid out in 1962 are all still cheaper to do with a person than to engineer around — but the repetitive half of the day (feeding a conveyor at fixed intervals, cycling totes between two fixed stations) is exactly what AMRs and palletizing cells already do at scale, which is why this sits at 13 and not 17.", "embodiment": "The whole job is body: lifting, pushing, walking loads across uneven ground, dust, cold storage, ports and construction laydown yards where the surface changes weekly and there is no fixed fixture to bolt a robot to — 16 rather than 20 only because a good share of these workers are inside a warehouse with a roof and a concrete floor.", "liability_shield": "Nothing here requires a state licence — a powered industrial truck operator needs OSHA 1910.178(l) employer-provided training and rigging may need a qualified-person sign-off, but the employer owns that certification and the employer eats the citation, so there is no personal credential standing between you and replacement.", "trust_premium": "The product of this work is a load in the right place at the right time; the receiving supervisor cares that the pallet is staged and undamaged, not who staged it, and there is no external customer who would follow you to another employer.", "judgment_accountability": "Sequencing, routing and lift decisions run off pick tickets, load plans, tag weights and posted capacity charts, and anything genuinely ambiguous — an unstable stack, an overweight lift, a damaged sling — is escalated to a lead or rigging supervisor rather than called by you, which is a 4 rather than a 10." }, "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket of hands-on material handling — feeding conveyors, moving product between stations, operating specialized movers, tending hoppers and chutes, staging loads — none of which language AI can touch directly. The exposure comes from mechanization rather than chatbots: autonomous mobile robots, automated conveyance, and palletizing cells are being installed exactly where the work is repetitive and the floor layout is predictable. What holds is the messy, variable, non-standard handling in older plants, ports, construction sites, and mixed-load facilities, where the cost of engineering a robot exceeds the wage.", "outlook": "Headcount in structured warehouse and plant settings keeps shrinking as mobile robots and conveyance get cheaper, while variable-site and specialized-load handling holds steady at lower volume.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Task-mix shift within the bucket: as AMRs and palletizing cells absorb flat-floor, uniform-load moves, the residual jobs concentrate in unstructured settings — port break-bulk, construction site staging, foundry and scrap handling, older multi-level plants with freight elevators and no reliable floor markings. The remaining work is more irregular, not less, which raises measured embodiment even as headcount falls.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "OSHA or state rules requiring a designated human spotter/attendant during mobile robot operation in mixed pedestrian-vehicle zones — the pattern already set by ANSI/ITSDF B56.5 safety standards for driverless industrial trucks and by warehouse-safety bills (e.g. Washington's HB 1762, New York's warehouse worker protection act) that regulate automated pacing. If attendance is mandated rather than optional, part of this workforce becomes a compliance requirement rather than a cost line.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Role redefinition into robot-fleet tending: exception handling, load-integrity calls, rigging and load-securement decisions on non-standard freight. Where employers formalize a 'lead materials handler' who signs off on load stability or hazmat staging under 49 CFR segregation rules, the call becomes owned rather than incidental.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Two tiers do exist here: repetitive conveyor-feeding versus judgment-heavy irregular handling. As the first tier is engineered out, what remains is the tier robots cannot cost-justify — but note this raises the score of the surviving job, not the number of jobs.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "No realistic route to a trust premium — buyers of freight and production throughput do not pay extra for human hands, and the work is invisible to the end customer. Liability gains are also capped: even mandated spotters are low-wage and one attendant can cover many machines, so a rule that raises the shield score can coexist with sharp employment decline." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 25990, "wage": 29610 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 27010, "wage": 29410 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 28240, "wage": 31770 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 26300, "wage": 32850 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 22470, "wage": 36150 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 24880, "wage": 38800 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 23970, "wage": 40310 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 25190, "wage": 41690 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 23480, "wage": 41800 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -9.7, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }