{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/miscellaneous-assemblers-and-fabricators/",
  "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": "Miscellaneous Assemblers and Fabricators",
    "soc_code": "51-2090",
    "category": "Production",
    "us_employment": 1405030,
    "median_annual_wage": 44650
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 33,
  "contested": true,
  "near_boundary": true,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 12,
    "embodiment": 14,
    "liability_shield": 1,
    "trust_premium": 2,
    "judgment_accountability": 4
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "At 12 rather than 6, the job survives because a huge share of assembly is short-run and high-mix — wire harnesses that must be dressed by feel, gaskets and O-rings that need tactile seating, subassemblies where the parts arrive with burrs, tolerance stack-up, or bent leads — and every model changeover means new fixtures, so the payback math keeps a human at the bench; it isn't higher than 12 because the other half of the work (press-and-fit, screw-driving, torque-to-spec, board loading, visual go/no-go against a print) is exactly what fixed automation and vision systems already do on the high-volume lines.",
    "embodiment": "You are on your feet at a bench or line for the shift, handling parts by hand, running a soldering iron, arbor press, riveter, heat gun and torque driver, with lifting, reaching and repetitive-motion exposure that no software touches.",
    "liability_shield": "There is no licence to assemble; you may hold an IPC-A-610 or J-STD-001 solder cert or a forklift card, but those gate a workstation, not the occupation, and when a unit fails in the field the liability lands on the manufacturer's quality system and engineering signoff, not on the operator who built it — hence 1 rather than 5.",
    "trust_premium": "The customer never learns your name; your output is a serialized unit that leaves the plant identical to the one the next operator built, and the only relationship that matters is with your line lead — which is why this sits at 2 and not 0, since long-tenured assemblers who know a product's quirks are genuinely hard for a plant to replace.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Most calls are bounded by the work instruction, the traveler and the torque spec, and the discretion you do have — pulling a suspect part, flagging a fit problem, stopping the line or calling the tech — is escalation rather than ownership, which puts this at 4 instead of 0 but nowhere near a role that decides in ambiguity."
  },
  "rationale": "The work — positioning parts, fastening, soldering, running presses, visual inspection against a spec sheet — is barely text work, so language AI touches it only at the edges (work instructions, quality documentation). The real exposure is industrial automation and offshoring: fixed automation, collaborative arms, and AI vision inspection already take the high-volume, low-variation stations, and the modal assembler works a repeatable bench task on a controlled line. What holds is short-run, high-mix, awkward-geometry assembly and rework, where fixturing a robot costs more than paying a person.",
  "outlook": "Employment keeps eroding through the 2030s as vision-guided cells absorb repetitive stations and production moves offshore, with the remaining jobs concentrated in rework, low-volume custom builds, and machine tending.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: as fixed automation and vision inspection absorb high-volume, low-variation stations, the surviving assembler population concentrates in short-run, high-mix, awkward-geometry build and rework — cable harnessing into tight enclosures, prototype and NPI builds, warranty teardown/repair. Watch for job postings shifting toward 'NPI technician' and 'rework/rebuild' titles, and for aerospace/defense harness shops where per-unit volumes never justify fixturing.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Certification-of-operator requirements tightening in aerospace/medical: FAA repair-station rules (14 CFR 145) and AS9100/NADCAP already require named, trained personnel for certain special processes; IPC J-STD-001 Space Addendum soldering requires individually certified operators with traceable stamps. If FDA QSR/ISO 13485 or defense primes extend named-operator traceability to more assembly steps — or if DFARS-driven supply-chain rules require a certified human sign-off on each build record rather than machine attestation — the person becomes contractually unsubstitutable for those stations.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal authority over disposition of nonconforming parts: if MRB (material review board) or stop-line authority is written into the assembler-technician role rather than reserved to quality engineers — as in some Toyota-derived andon systems and UAW/IAM contract language on stop-work rights — the role owns consequential accept/scrap/rework calls under ambiguity.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Reshoring of high-mix, low-volume work under CHIPS/IRA content rules and tariff regimes: if content requirements push assembly of awkward, cabled, low-volume products (medical devices, defense electronics, EV service parts) into US plants where robot fixturing cost per unit stays uneconomic, the surviving work is disproportionately the unstructured-environment kind. Watch tariff-driven onshoring announcements that specify manual final assembly rather than automated lines.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "No realistic route to a trust premium: buyers of assembled goods do not pay extra for a human hand, and 'handmade' framing does not transfer to industrial subassemblies. Even with every lever above, gains concentrate in regulated aerospace/medical/defense niches — a minority of the 1.4M — and are structurally offset by continued offshoring and falling cobot fixturing cost. This occupation's realistic ceiling is roughly the mid-40s, and only for the certified-process subset."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs disagreed; merge is rounding-dependent",
    "outcome": "unresolved — published score left unchanged",
    "run_totals": [
      33,
      34
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "COOKED",
      "EXPOSED"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 1371920,
        "wage": 32350
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 1258780,
        "wage": 33550
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 1328550,
        "wage": 36590
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 1454130,
        "wage": 37280
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 1489280,
        "wage": 38920
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 1457800,
        "wage": 42210
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 1405030,
        "wage": 44650
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 2.4,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}