SAFE
Mixing mortar, applying scratch, brown, and finish coats by hawk and trowel, running scaffolding on exterior elevations, and matching texture on a 60-year-old patch repair are physical crafts with no digital surface for AI to grab. There is no licensed-professional sign-off in most states — the moat is hands and job-site chaos, not regulation. AI touches only the paperwork edge: bidding math, material takeoffs, and scheduling.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
Median pay $45,440 → $57,660 +1.5% 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
+4.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 19,310 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +4.1% more of these jobs by 2034. Note that safe does not mean well paid — several of the fastest-growing resistant occupations are among the lowest paid on the register.
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.
~1,900 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
MasonArtisanModelerPlastererApplicatorStucco MasonDry PlastererStucco WorkerPlaster MolderMason PlastererPlaster MechanicStucco PlastererArtisan PlastererMolding PlastererStucco ApplicatorPlaster ApplicatorSynthetic PlastererDecorative PlastererOrnamental PlastererPlasterer JourneymanPlastering ContractorHard Surface PlastererSwimming Pool PlastererPlaster and Stucco Worker
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Feathering a three-coat veneer to a knife-edge return, reading suction on a hot wall and adjusting water at the mixer, and troweling before the set are decisions made by wrist and eye in real time — the only tasks a machine can take are the takeoff sheet and the invoice, which is why this sits at 18 rather than the low teens where prefab panel installation would land it.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are on pump scaffold at 30 feet in wind, hawk in one hand, working over your head in a lath cage on an occupied remodel where nothing is square and the substrate changes every eight feet — there is no controlled cell version of this job, so 20 is literal.
Certification preferred, not legally required Most states require no plastering licence at all; you work under the GC's contractor licence and building-department inspection of the lath and weather barrier, so the 6 reflects OSHA scaffold/silica competency and any EIFS-manufacturer applicator certification a spec calls for, not personal legal exposure of your own.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether a substrate is sound enough to take a coat, where to place control joints so a wall doesn't map-crack, and how to blend a patch into 60-year-old sand finish — real calls with callback and moisture-intrusion consequences, but working within ASTM C926 coat thicknesses and the architect's spec rather than owning the design.
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 (6/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (11/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (12/20) 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 29 of this occupation's 67 points (43%).
Embodiment (20/20) 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 82/100, still SAFE.
Insurer-driven: builder's-risk and homebuilder GL carriers conditioning coverage for stucco-clad assemblies on documented third-party envelope inspection plus certified applicator signature, following the pattern of the Florida condo/EIFS claim wave.
Growth of historic-preservation work where lime plaster, three-coat traditional and ornamental run-in-place mouldings must meet Secretary of the Interior Standards for tax-credit projects — spec language that names hand-applied lime plaster and disallows synthetic substitutes makes the human hand the deliverable, not just the method.
State/local adoption of mandatory installer certification for exterior wall assemblies — e.g. more jurisdictions requiring EIFS/stucco work be done by a manufacturer-certified applicator (already required by many warranty programs from Sto, Dryvit, Parex) and requiring a named certified applicator affidavit on the water-resistive barrier inspection before drywall cover. Building-envelope water intrusion litigation in FL, TX and coastal Carolinas is the visible driver.
Task-mix shift as the routine tier thins: if drywall/level-5 and panelized prefab plaster take the flat repetitive volume, the remaining paid work concentrates in patch-matching, substrate diagnosis (is this cracking structural or shrinkage?), and remediation calls where the wrong read means tearing off a wall.
Formal role as the trade witness in envelope commissioning — signing off substrate moisture readings and lath/flashing conditions before covering, which makes the applicator the person who owned the go/no-go call in later disputes.
The limit. Embodiment is already maxed and task_resistance near it, so the realistic headroom is only the ~14 points sitting idle in liability_shield and trust_premium. Nothing in motion suggests plasterers get a state license comparable to electricians; certification-plus-insurance is the likelier and weaker route. Note also that the biggest downside risk is not AI but substitution — panelized/prefab cladding and drywall replacing site-applied plaster — which shrinks headcount without any dimension score falling.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,690 | $57,930 +0% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 1,310 | $49,700 -14% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 1,290 | $53,580 -7% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 840 | $120,180 +108% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 780 | $57,140 -1% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 580 | $71,310 +24% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 520 | $61,080 +6% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 460 | $56,990 -1% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 840 | $120,180 +108% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 100 | $108,160 +88% |
| Urban Honolulu, HI | 100 | $105,870 +84% |
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 67. 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.