{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/radio-cellular-and-tower-equipment-installers-and-repairers/",
  "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": "Radio, Cellular, and Tower Equipment Installers and Repairers",
    "soc_code": "49-2021",
    "category": "Trades",
    "us_employment": 11140,
    "median_annual_wage": 63520
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 66,
  "contested": true,
  "near_boundary": true,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 17,
    "embodiment": 20,
    "liability_shield": 9,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 12
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Hoisting a 60-pound RRU up a 300-foot lattice tower, aligning a microwave dish to a fraction of a degree by hand while watching the RSL meter, and pinning down a water-intrusion fault in a jumper that only fails in the rain are tasks no software can perform remotely — the 17 rather than 20 reflects that alarm triage, sweep-trace interpretation, and closeout paperwork are genuinely being pulled into carrier NOC platforms.",
    "embodiment": "There is no version of this job done from a desk: you are in a full-body harness on a monopole in wind, on a rooftop in heat, in a cabinet at grade in the snow, hauling coax and torquing weatherproofed connectors — the environment is uncontrolled in every dimension, which is what a 20 means.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licence gates tower work; what you carry is OSHA 1926 Subpart M fall-protection competency, ANSI/TIA-322 rigging awareness, an authorized-climber/rescue card, RF-awareness training, and often a carrier-specific certification — real credentials that gate who gets on the tower, but issued by employers and third parties rather than a board that can strip your right to practice, which puts this at 9 rather than 14.",
    "trust_premium": "Your name matters to the turf vendor and the carrier construction manager who keep dispatching your crew because your closeouts pass audit and you don't cause a site revisit, but the work is bid through subcontract chains and the end customer never knows who climbed — relationship secures the next PO, not the fee.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Calling a climb off for wind or ice, deciding a leg member's corrosion means the structure gets a mapping before anyone goes up, and choosing whether to take a live sector down during a maintenance window are decisions you own in the moment with no one to ask — bounded, though, by method-of-procedure documents, RFDS sheets, and carrier approval for anything touching the air interface."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job is climbing 200-foot monopoles and water tanks, swapping radios and antennas, torquing hardware, pulling and terminating coax and fiber jumpers, and sweep-testing lines — none of which language models or current robotics can touch. AI does erode the paperwork tier: closeout packages, photo documentation reports, site audit write-ups, RF datasheet lookups, and first-pass alarm triage are already being automated by carrier software. The real employment risk here is carrier capital spending cycles and the end of the 5G buildout, not AI; this is a small, cyclical occupation where the work itself stays stubbornly human.",
  "outlook": "Employment tracks carrier spending more than AI: the climbing and turn-up work stays human through the decade, while documentation-heavy roles thin out and pay shifts toward certified crew leads.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "OSHA has had a communication tower safety rulemaking on its agenda since the 2014 fatality spike; if a final standard requires a documented competent-person/qualified-climber certification with named sign-off on each climb plan and rigging plan (analogous to the crane operator certification rule, 29 CFR 1926.1427), the personally-attested human role becomes legally mandatory rather than contractual.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "FCC antenna structure registration and FAA obstruction lighting compliance currently rest on the owner; a rule requiring a certified technician's attested inspection record for tower lighting and structural mods (rather than remote monitoring alone) would attach personal liability to the climbing tech.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Carrier/turf-vendor insurers already require TIA-322 rigging plans and NATE STAR accreditation for prime contractors; if general liability carriers make named-individual competent-person certification a condition of coverage on every crew, the shield hardens without new statute.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "As alarm triage and closeout paperwork are automated, the residual role is the call at height under ambiguity — condemning a corroded member, refusing a climb on ice or wind, deciding a mount cannot carry the added load. Field structural-integrity judgment on aging 1990s towers being reloaded for FirstNet/C-band becomes the named accountability.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: the paperwork tier is genuinely being stripped out, leaving climbing, rigging, torque-to-spec, PIM/sweep interpretation and troubleshooting intermittent faults — but this occupation's score is already near ceiling, so the residual gain is small.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 1
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "task_resistance and embodiment are effectively maxed; the honest headroom is only in liability and judgment, and even a full OSHA tower standard caps the total near the high 70s. No plausible route to a trust premium — the buyer is a handful of carriers and turf vendors purchasing on price per site, and no end consumer knows or pays for who climbed. The dominant risk remains capex cycles, which none of these levers touch."
  },
  "adjudication": {
    "method": "two independent runs disagreed; merge is rounding-dependent",
    "outcome": "unresolved — published score left unchanged",
    "run_totals": [
      66,
      68
    ],
    "run_verdicts": [
      "EXPOSED",
      "SAFE"
    ]
  },
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 15310,
        "wage": 56000
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 13930,
        "wage": 54890
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 14370,
        "wage": 55380
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 13210,
        "wage": 57720
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 13700,
        "wage": 60360
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 13020,
        "wage": 59720
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 11810,
        "wage": 61310
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 11400,
        "wage": 64190
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 11140,
        "wage": 63520
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -27.2,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}