EXPOSED
This residual catch-all is dominated by hands-on AV and broadcast equipment work: rigging projectors, screens, mics, cameras and satellite/streaming gear in hotels, arenas, houses of worship and studios, then troubleshooting when a feed drops five minutes before doors. That physical setup and live fault-finding is not something today's robotics touches, but the softer half of the job — cueing playback, running teleprompter, captioning, switching, signal routing, logging and archiving media — is exactly what automated switchers, auto-tracking cameras and AI captioning already do at usable quality. There is no license, no signature, and clients buy a working room rather than a named person, so the moat is physical presence and event-day accountability only.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
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.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+0.6%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 12,450 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 +0.6% 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.
~1,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Best WorkerRadar OperatorSpotlight OperatorDensitometer ReaderDimmer Board OperatorSatellite Communications Operator
The BLS uses Media and Communication Equipment Workers, All Other for work that doesn't fit any named occupation, so it covers roles that have little in common with each other. Two consequences worth knowing before you read anything below:
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Cable runs, truss rigging, mic placement and chasing a dead SDI line at load-in stay manual, but teleprompter operation, playback cueing, camera tracking and live captioning — a real share of your billed hours — are already handled by auto-switchers and ASR at broadcast-acceptable quality, which is what pins this at 12 rather than the 16 a pure rigger would get.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work at height on ladders and lifts, in half-built ballrooms, outdoor stages in weather and cramped booths, hauling cases and terminating connectors on site — 15 rather than 18 only because a meaningful slice of the shift is spent seated at a switcher, console or edit bay in a controlled room.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no state license for AV or broadcast equipment operation; OSHA fall-protection and occasional FCC-station or rigging/ETCP certifications may be asked for by a venue, but nothing legally requires you specifically rather than whoever the shop sends.
Meaningful discretion When the satellite feed drops or a wireless channel starts hitting interference mid-event, you decide in seconds whether to switch to backup, re-patch or ride it out with no one to escalate to — but the rest is show files, run-of-show sheets and manufacturer spec, so the discretion is fast rather than consequential.
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 (12/20 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 (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (7/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (7/20) 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 16 of this occupation's 43 points (37%).
Embodiment (15/20) 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 62/100, still EXPOSED.
Show-caller / technical-director-in-charge designation in union or venue contracts (IATSE local agreements already name a head of department per call) making one person the decision-maker on go/no-go, load limits and failover during live broadcast — consequential calls under ambiguity with no time to escalate.
Task-mix shift: as auto-switchers, auto-tracking PTZ cameras and AI captioning absorb the cueing/switching/captioning tier, what remains is live rigging, RF coordination in congested spectrum, multi-vendor signal integration and fault diagnosis under time pressure — a genuinely harder residual job. Watch for job postings shifting from 'AV operator' to 'AV systems tech / network AV (AVoIP, Dante, NDI)' requirements.
Certification-as-gatekeeper: venue insurers or general contractors requiring ETCP-certified riggers (Entertainment Technician Certification Program) or licensed low-voltage electricians to sign off on any overhead suspension or permanent AV install — already contractually required at many arenas and by some state low-voltage licensing regimes (e.g., FL, OR, TX electrical licensing for structured cabling). A named signatory on the rigging plot converts 'no license' into personal accountability.
FCC-facing accountability: enforcement actions on wireless mic operation in the 600 MHz/ TV band requiring a licensed coordinator of record for large events, or ADA/FCC captioning-quality complaints landing on a named human reviewer rather than the ASR vendor. Watch FCC IP-captioning quality rulemaking dockets.
Growth in hybrid/live-streamed events pushing more work into unfamiliar non-purpose-built venues (ballrooms, warehouses, houses of worship) where rigging points, power and network are improvised each time; also FAA/OSHA-governed overhead truss and rigging work where fall-protection and load calculation must be done by a person on site.
Narrow route only: high-stakes live events (broadcast, political, arena, litigation-recorded proceedings) where clients contractually name the lead tech and demand on-site human redundancy because a dropped feed is unrecoverable. This is a premium on presence at a specific moment, not on a person's craft, and does not extend to the hotel-ballroom majority of the occupation.
The limit. Even with rigging certification and show-caller status, this stays a mid-scoring occupation: the trust premium is thin because buyers purchase a functioning room, and the certification route protects the senior rigger/systems tier while the operator tier — playback, prompter, captioning, logging — keeps thinning. The realistic ceiling is roughly high-50s/low-60s, and it splits the occupation rather than lifting all 12,450 workers.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,110 | $64,540 -9% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 670 | $121,680 +72% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 520 | $48,120 -32% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 440 | $66,650 -6% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 420 | $110,780 +57% |
| Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD | 360 | $71,090 +1% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 280 | $56,730 -20% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 270 | $75,600 +7% |
| Salinas, CA | 40 | $132,930 +88% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 670 | $121,680 +72% |
| Colorado Springs, CO | 230 | $118,250 +67% |
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.