EXPOSED
This is a catch-all bucket — segmental paving crews, tank/septic servicers, weatherization and specialty trade helpers, general 'all other' construction roles — and the modal worker spends the day on a job site placing, cutting, fitting, digging, and hauling in weather and dirt, which no shipping robot does. Language AI touches almost none of the core work; the exposure is in the thin paperwork layer (permits, daily logs, material takeoffs, scheduling) and in AI-assisted planning that trims crew hours. The reason the score isn't in electrician territory is credential thinness: most of these titles carry no state license, no stamped sign-off, and no named client relationship, so wages and bargaining power rest on labor supply rather than a legal moat.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
Median pay $39,720 → $49,910 +0.5% 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
+3.5%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 28,380 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +3.5% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 63/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
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.
~3,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
PaverCutterShorerSloperCribberLeadmanTie ManWreckerWall ManInstallerLaminatorPipelinerSlip MixerSlurry ManTar BoilerTar HeaterTie WorkerHouse MoverLeadite ManPaver LayerWall WorkerBlind HangerGrade SetterHome Builder
The BLS uses Miscellaneous Construction and Related Workers 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 .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Setting segmental pavers to grade by hand, pumping and hosing out septic tanks, blowing cellulose into knee-wall cavities, and hand-digging around live utility laterals are tasks where the variability of the substrate — soil, existing structure, unmarked pipe — defeats fixed-path machinery, which is why this sits at 18 rather than in the 14 range where more repetitive prefab or panel work would land.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments A 19 reflects excavation, confined-space tank entry, roof and crawlspace access, respirators for insulation dust, and lifting pavers or block all day in whatever weather the schedule hands you — the only thing keeping it off 20 is the fraction of these titles that includes some shop or staging work.
Certification preferred, not legally required Most of these titles hire off a résumé and an OSHA 10 card; septic servicers may need a state pumper registration and confined-space or lead-RRP certification, but nobody stamps a drawing and nobody's personal license is on the line when the work fails — the GC's or the licensed sub's is, which is why 5 and not 11.
Meaningful discretion An 11 covers the real calls made without a supervisor present — stopping the shovel when you hit an unmarked line, deciding a base isn't compacted enough to set on, judging whether a tank lid is safe to stand on — while acknowledging that grades, specs, and sequencing come down from someone else.
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 (18/20 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 (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (10/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (11/20) 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 26 of this occupation's 63 points (41%).
Embodiment (19/20) 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 78/100 — SAFE.
Extension of state licensing/certification with personal sign-off to currently unlicensed niches in this bucket: e.g. state onsite-wastewater (septic) installer/servicer licensing with a named licensee certifying each system installation or pump-out manifest (already law in NC, TX, MA Title 5 system inspectors); or DOE/state weatherization work requiring a BPI-certified individual to sign the post-retrofit blower-door and combustion-safety test before rebate payout, which utility programs increasingly require
OSHA or state adoption of a confined-space/excavation rule requiring a named, individually credentialed competent person on site — not a remote supervisor — to certify trench protective systems and entry permits daily, with personal citation exposure (29 CFR 1926 Subpart P already names a competent person; making the designation a portable credential with personal liability rather than an employer designation is the specific change to watch)
Formalizing the field-condition call as the credentialed worker's own: rules that make the on-site competent person's stop-work or soil-classification decision binding over the schedule, and utility damage-prevention statutes (811/one-call) that put the personal duty to hand-expose and verify utility locations on the named excavator rather than the AI-generated locate map
Task-mix shift as the paperwork tier is automated away: if permits, logs, takeoffs and scheduling move to software, the remaining day is diagnosis and repair of nonstandard existing conditions — failing tanks, unknown buried utilities, out-of-spec substrates — which is the judgment tier. This only holds for the servicing/retrofit titles in the bucket, not for the helper and hauling titles, where automating the paperwork removes nothing and the work stays commodity labor
Only a narrow route: named-technician branding in residential septic/weatherization service where the homeowner is the buyer and repeat relationship exists, reinforced by warranty terms naming the certifying individual. For paving crews, tank hauling, and trade helpers working under a GC, there is no buyer who can express a preference for a specific human and no plausible mechanism to create one
The limit. Embodiment and task_resistance are near maximum already; there is no upside there, and the whole realistic gain is institutional. The bucket is not one job: the licensable niches (septic/onsite wastewater, weatherization testing) could plausibly reach the mid-70s on liability shield alone, while 'construction workers, all other' helpers and haulers have no credentialing body seeking jurisdiction over them and no client relationship, so their exposure is set by labor supply and construction demand, not by AI capability, and no lever listed here reaches them.
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,750 | $45,500 -9% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 980 | $60,880 +22% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 970 | $48,620 -3% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 850 | $54,770 +10% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 780 | $48,380 -3% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 770 | $42,670 -15% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 760 | $65,610 +31% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 720 | $74,880 +50% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 430 | $83,310 +67% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 180 | $77,370 +55% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 120 | $75,550 +51% |
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 63. 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.