EXPOSED
Aides spend most of the day physically present — setting up therapy equipment, moving patients between treatment areas, cleaning and stocking, guiding patients through routines the OT designed — and none of that is close to robot-ready. The exposure isn't robotics, it's the clerical half of the job: scheduling, insurance forms, supply orders, and progress-note transcription are already being absorbed by software, which shrinks the hours that justify the position. No licensure and no sign-off authority means there is nothing legally reserved to an aide, so the role can be reassigned to OT assistants or techs whenever budgets tighten.
Nearly all of this fall was the 2020 shock. It has been climbing back since.
Median pay $29,230 → $39,160 +7.2% 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
+2.5%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 4,310 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 +2.5% 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.
~600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Therapy AideRestorative AideRehabilitation Services AideIndependent Living SpecialistOccupational Rehabilitation AideRehabilitation Aide (Rehab Aide)Direct Service Professional (DSP)Direct Support Professional (DSP)Occupational Therapy Aide (OT Aide)Occupational Therapist Aide (OT Aide)Rehabilitation Therapy Aide (Rehab Therapy Aide)Certified Occupational Rehabilitation Aide (CORA)Rehabilitation Nursing Technician (Rehab Nursing Tech)Rehabilitation Therapy Technician (Rehab Therapy Tech)Rehabilitation Services Technician (Rehab Services Tech)SNF COTA (Skilled Nursing Facility Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Setting up mat tables, transferring a patient into a splint fitting, and cueing a hand-therapy routine keep this above a 10, but the scheduling, insurance authorization forms, supply reorders and typed session notes that fill the rest of an aide's shift are already handled by clinic software, which is why it sits at 11 rather than in the resistant band.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Every hour is spent in a clinic on your feet — hauling weighted equipment, wiping down mats between patients, walking someone with poor balance from waiting room to ADL kitchen, adapting mid-transfer when a patient's knee buckles — and only the fact that it happens in a controlled, familiar treatment space rather than out in homes and job sites holds it at 17 instead of 20.
No licence, no signature requirement Aides need no state licence in any state, typically only a high-school diploma plus CPR, and nothing an aide does is legally reserved to the title — the OT and the licensed OTA carry the documentation and treatment liability, so the 2 reflects on-the-job training rather than any credential that would slow a substitution.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs The OT writes the plan and the aide executes it — no evaluations, no treatment modifications, no goal-setting under most state practice acts — and the discretion that does exist is limited to noticing a patient is in pain or a transfer looks unsafe and calling the therapist, which is escalation, not a call you own, hence 4.
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 (11/20 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 (9/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (4/20) 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 15 of this occupation's 43 points (35%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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 52/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift: if scheduling, authorization forms, supply reordering and note transcription are fully absorbed by clinic software, the surviving aide hours are almost entirely hands-on setup, transfers, patient guarding and equipment sanitation — the residual job is more resistant than today's blend, even though total hours fall. Watch for job postings that drop 'clerical/front-desk duties' from aide descriptions.
A state occupational therapy practice act amendment creating a registered or certified 'OT aide' credential with a state registry and mandatory training hours — the model CNA/nurse-aide registry under OBRA '87, which several states have discussed extending to rehab aides. Also relevant: state ratio rules capping aides per supervising OT (e.g., limits already written into some state OT board rules) and CMS Part B 'line-of-sight supervision' language for therapy aides in outpatient settings. A tightened, enforced supervision-plus-registry regime makes the aide a named, non-substitutable role rather than an interchangeable tech.
Narrow route only: private-pay pediatric, hand-therapy and post-op home-based practices where the family pays for a consistent named person to do the physical setup and coaching between OT visits. If home-health and cash-pay pediatric caseloads keep growing and clinics market continuity of the same aide, this rises modestly. There is no broad hospital-side route — institutional buyers do not pay a premium for a specific aide.
The limit. The binding constraint is headcount economics, not machine capability. Embodiment is already near ceiling at 17 and cannot carry the score. Because aides are barred by every state practice act from evaluation, treatment planning or discharge decisions, judgment_accountability has no plausible upward route — raising it would require redefining the occupation as an OT assistant, which is a different SOC. Even with a registry credential the role stays reassignable to OTAs and multi-skilled techs whenever a facility consolidates support staff.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 200 | $46,260 +18% |
| Pittsburgh, PA | 150 | $37,100 -5% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 130 | $38,090 -3% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 130 | $38,550 -2% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 110 | $42,790 +9% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 100 | $45,840 +17% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 70 | $41,400 +6% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 70 | $40,200 +3% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 30 | $68,550 +75% |
| Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT | 40 | $46,320 +18% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 200 | $46,260 +18% |
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.