{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/production-workers-all-other/", "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": "Production Workers, All Other", "soc_code": "51-9199", "category": "Production", "us_employment": 251700, "median_annual_wage": 40110 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 35, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 12, "embodiment": 13, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 3, "judgment_accountability": 5 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "At 12 rather than 16, the physical steps — loading fixtures, deburring by hand, hand-packing odd-shaped product — genuinely can't be typed into a prompt, but they sit inside standardized cycle times on a repeatable line, which is precisely the work robotic cells and vision inspection have already taken over in higher-volume plants.", "embodiment": "A 13 reflects that the whole shift happens on your feet at a machine or bench with material in your hands, but the floor is a lit, flat, climate-managed indoor space with fixed station layouts — not a roof, a trench, or a customer's basement, which is what pushes a score into the high teens.", "liability_shield": "A 2 is honest: no state license gates entry, the machine guarding and OSHA duties rest on the employer under 29 CFR 1910, and QC sign-off traces to the quality department or the engineer who wrote the spec, so nothing legally requires that a human hold this station.", "trust_premium": "At 3, the part leaves your hands unmarked and interchangeable with the same part from second shift — no customer knows your name, and the only relationship that matters is with the supervisor and the crew, which doesn't survive a line rebuild.", "judgment_accountability": "A 5 fits work bounded by the work order, the travel sheet, and go/no-go gauges, where the discretion you do hold — pulling a suspect batch, calling maintenance when a feeder jams — is real but escalates upward within minutes rather than resolving on your authority." }, "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket for hands-on production work that doesn't fit a named title — feeding and tending machines, hand-assembling parts, inspecting output, packing, moving material between stations. Language AI can't do any of that, which is real protection; the threat is industrial automation and vision-based inspection, and factory floors are exactly the controlled environments where robotics actually works. There is no license, no client relationship, and little discretion, so when a line is re-tooled the job is designed out rather than augmented.", "outlook": "Headcount in this bucket keeps shrinking through the 2030s as vision inspection and pick-and-place cells spread, with the surviving jobs concentrated in setup, fault-clearing, and high-mix work.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Regulated-sector production carve-outs where a named human must sign a batch record: FDA 21 CFR 211/820 device and drug lot-release, FSMA preventive-control monitoring records, and AS9100/Nadcap special-process operator certification. If FDA's evolving guidance on AI in manufacturing (the 2025 draft on AI credibility in regulated decisions) settles on requiring an identified, trained human to attest to automated inspection results rather than validating the system alone, the named-verifier role inside 51-9199 hardens.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formal designation of line operators as the 'qualified person' in quality systems — signing deviation/nonconformance reports, authorizing stop-line and hold decisions when vision inspection flags ambiguity. Already contractual in some UAW/USW quality-agreement language and in ISO 9001 competence requirements; expands if defect-recall liability pushes firms to name a human decision owner for every disposition call.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift within the bucket: this SOC genuinely has two tiers. If repetitive feed/pack/count work is automated first, what remains is changeover, fixture setup, jam and exception recovery, and hand-finishing of odd geometries — work that resists cell-level automation because volumes don't amortize tooling. Watch high-mix low-volume reshoring (CHIPS-adjacent suppliers, defense small-lot) where lot sizes stay under automation payback.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Growth of the sub-bucket doing non-repeatable physical work: rework, teardown/refurbish, and remanufacturing lines where each incoming unit differs. Right-to-repair statutes (Minnesota 2023, Oregon 2024) and EU battery/ecodesign remanufacture rules expand exactly this unstructured-input physical work, which is much harder to fixture than greenfield assembly.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow and mostly not available: certified-handmade or origin-labeled goods (small-batch food, instruments, artisanal consumer products) carry a human-made premium, but they are a tiny share of the 251,700 and the premium attaches to the brand rather than the worker. No realistic route to a broad trust premium in commodity production.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "The structural ceiling is that no license attaches to the occupation itself — the liability shields above protect a designated role a firm assigns, not a credential a worker carries, so employers can concentrate sign-off authority in a handful of quality technicians and design the rest of the headcount out. Regulated-sector protection also only covers the pharma/device/food/aerospace slice; the general-manufacturing majority has no analogous mechanism." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 256050, "wage": 28890 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 230760, "wage": 30170 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 222230, "wage": 29800 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 194360, "wage": 31420 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 204500, "wage": 32930 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 252660, "wage": 35490 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 243500, "wage": 37430 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 277060, "wage": 38820 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 251700, "wage": 40110 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -1.7, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }