COOKED
The core of this job — running MRP/ERP schedules, checking inventory against work orders, chasing late purchase orders, updating production status reports, and emailing suppliers about delivery dates — is exactly the structured data reconciliation and templated correspondence that ERP automation plus LLMs now handle end to end. What resists is the part that happens off-system: walking the floor to see why line 3 actually stopped, working a supplier contact who owes you a favor to pull a shipment forward, and making the call on which order slips when two customers both scream. That tier is real but it is a fraction of the hours, and no license protects the rest.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $48,260 → $59,650 -1.1% 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
-1.8% 388,800 → 381,700 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -1.8% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
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.
~34,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
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Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Core tasks are already automatable Releasing work orders off an MRP run, reconciling on-hand counts to BOM requirements, pulling open-PO aging reports, and sending delivery-date follow-ups are already native ERP functions or one prompt away, which is why this sits at 6 rather than mid-band — the exception handling that resists is a slice of the week, not the backbone of the job.
Some physical or field component A 7 reflects the genuine floor time — physically walking the line to see why the machine is down, counting a bin that the system says is wrong, checking a staging area before you promise a ship date — but you spend most of the shift at a terminal in a plant office, not in the uncontrolled outdoor or field conditions that push a score into the teens.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no license, no state board, and no certification anyone actually checks for this role — an APICS/CPIM credential helps you get hired and raises your pay, but nothing legal stops the plant from having a supervisor or a system release the schedule instead of you, which is what puts this at 1 rather than 5.
Meaningful discretion When two orders compete for the same short part and you decide which customer slips, that is real discretion — but it typically runs inside priority rules, a customer tier list, or an escalation to the production manager who owns the consequence, which keeps this at 7 rather than in the range where the ambiguous call and its fallout are both yours.
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 (6/20 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 (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (6/20) 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 14 of this occupation's 27 points (52%).
Embodiment (7/20) 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.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to production, planning, and expediting clerks on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
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 40/100 — EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift: once ERP agents (SAP Joule, Oracle Fusion planning agents, Microsoft Dynamics autonomous supply-chain agents) absorb MRP runs, PO chasing and status reporting, the residual role is exception management — diagnosing why a work order stalled, negotiating expedite fees, resequencing under allocation. The job title survives only where a plant has enough unmodeled variability (job shop, engineer-to-order, aerospace low-volume) that exceptions dominate. Watch for job postings retitled 'supply chain analyst' or 'materials expeditor' with fewer heads and higher pay bands.
Named-human allocation decisions under shortage: in defense and aerospace, DPAS-rated order priority (DPAS Rating Authority, 15 CFR 700) requires a person to accept or reject rated orders and document the resequencing; similar in FDA-regulated drug-shortage allocation. If prime contractors push rated-order and allocation sign-off down to the planning desk with named accountability, the role owns consequential calls rather than executing them.
Records-integrity signature in regulated production: FDA 21 CFR Part 11 / Part 211 batch-record and EU Annex 11 regimes already require a named human to review and sign production records; if pharma and medical-device firms require a human planner to countersign AI-generated schedule and material-disposition changes that touch the batch record, a small but real personal sign-off attaches. Also watch AS9100/ITAR export-control sign-off on supplier communications.
Growth of the floor-walking half of the role: plants where the clerk is also the physical materials chaser (kitting verification, WIP counts, tag reconciliation on lines with poor barcode discipline) keeps a body requirement. This rises only if RFID/computer-vision WIP tracking stays unfinished, which it largely has outside high-end automotive and semiconductor.
The limit. No plausible route to a higher trust premium — no buyer pays extra knowing a human sent the expedite email, and the counterparty is increasingly another firm's agent. Even with every lever, this occupation stays low: the liability and judgment gains concentrate in regulated aerospace/pharma/defense plants, which are a minority of the 390k, and the gains come with headcount collapse in the rest. A higher score for the surviving job is not a higher number of jobs.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 28,600 | $63,130 +6% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 23,320 | $61,810 +4% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 13,160 | $81,850 +37% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 10,130 | $56,360 -6% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 9,370 | $58,310 -2% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 8,830 | $57,600 -3% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 8,560 | $59,900 +0% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 7,370 | $59,110 -1% |
| Idaho Falls, ID | 200 | $83,790 +40% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 13,160 | $81,850 +37% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 7,220 | $76,900 +29% |
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 27. 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.