EXPOSED
Much of the visible workload is paperwork AI already handles well: writing Individualized Plans for Employment, case notes, eligibility determinations from medical records, benefits-eligibility screening, and matching clients to job listings or training programs. What does not automate is the sustained, in-person relationship with a client navigating disability, injury, or mental illness — motivating someone through a failed placement, reading resistance in a home visit, negotiating accommodations with a skeptical employer. Certification (CRC) and state agency rules require a credentialed human on the case, but that shield is administrative rather than a hard professional license with personal liability.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $35,950 → $46,850 +4.3% 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
+1.4% 91,900 → 93,200 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +1.4% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 58/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
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.
~10,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
ClinicianCounselorJob CoachCase ManagerJob DeveloperCare NavigatorClient TrainerDrug CounselorWork CounselorElder CounselorGrief CounselorGroup CounselorOptions AdvisorSuccess PartnerBehavior AnalystCareer NavigatorClient NavigatorHousing NavigatorBehavior TherapistBehavioral AnalystClinical CounselorEmployment AdvisorEmployment TrainerLicensed Clinician
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier IPE drafting, eligibility narratives from medical and psychological reports, labor-market surveys pulled from O*NET, and progress notes are the bulk of billable hours and already draft themselves, but the counterweight is real: job-site accommodation walkthroughs, motivational interviewing with a client who just lost a placement, and employer negotiation over a schedule change keep this at 11 rather than down with claims processing.
Some physical or field component You are in cars a lot — home visits, job coaching on a warehouse floor, ergonomic assessments at a client's workstation, transport to interviews — but the work itself is talking and observing, not lifting or manipulating, so it sits at 9 rather than the 14+ of an occupational therapist doing hands-on transfers and modality treatment.
Certification preferred, not legally required CRC certification plus state VR agency requirements mean a named counselor must sign eligibility determinations and authorize service purchases, and CARF/state audits do bite — but you carry no independent practice license, malpractice exposure sits with the agency or CARF-accredited provider, and a non-certified case manager can lawfully do much of the same work in many private and workers'-comp settings, which caps this at 8.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether someone with a fluctuating condition has a substantial impediment to employment, whether an unsuccessful closure or a costly retraining plan is justified, and when to close a case over a client's objection — high-stakes calls under Rehabilitation Act order-of-selection rules and appealable to a hearing officer, but bounded by written state eligibility criteria and supervisor sign-off on expensive authorizations, so 13 not 17.
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 (8/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (17/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) 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 38 of this occupation's 58 points (66%).
Embodiment (9/20) 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 72/100 — SAFE.
Genuine two-tier job: if IPE drafting, case notes, medical-record eligibility abstraction and job-listing matching are absorbed by agency case-management systems, the residual day is home visits, motivational work after failed placements, employer accommodation negotiation, and crisis triage — the tier that has not automated. Watch state VR contracts with case-management vendors (e.g. Libera, Aware/AWARE-based systems) adding generative drafting modules.
CRCC (Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification) adding an explicit code-of-ethics provision making the certificant accountable for AI-generated assessments, vocational opinions, and case documentation they adopt — mirroring the ABA and state bar guidance on AI use — creating a discipline hook for unreviewed output.
State VR agencies operate under the federal Rehabilitation Act; a Rehabilitation Services Administration or state-plan requirement that eligibility determinations and IPE approvals be signed by a CRC-credentialed counselor of record, with the determination voidable on appeal if unsigned, would convert the current administrative credential into an audit-enforced signature. Watch also state licensure bills for rehabilitation counselors (LPC/LRC scope statutes, e.g. states that folded rehab counseling into LPC licensure) that attach personal disciplinary liability for plan decisions.
Forensic and expert-witness vocational work — Social Security disability hearings, workers' comp loss-of-earning-capacity opinions, life-care planning — places the counselor's named opinion under cross-examination and Daubert scrutiny. Growth in the share of the occupation doing SSA VE testimony or comp-carrier vocational assessment, or an SSA/ALJ rule barring purely algorithmic vocational evidence, would raise this.
Only route is task-mix: if remote documentation work is stripped out, the remaining role concentrates in home visits, worksite job analysis, and on-site accommodation assessment (ergonomic measurement, physical demands observation). No policy lever raises this; it is residual composition.
The limit. Trust premium at 17 is near its practical ceiling and cannot rise much: most of this workforce is employed by state VR agencies and insurers, so the client is not the buyer and cannot express a preference for a human by paying more. Liability is the binding constraint — absent a real state license with personal exposure, the credential stays administrative and the score stays capped in the low teens.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,980 | $43,480 -7% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 3,430 | $47,440 +1% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,940 | $48,290 +3% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 2,820 | $58,580 +25% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,800 | $50,000 +7% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,440 | $49,350 +5% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 1,680 | $49,890 +6% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 1,620 | $48,660 +4% |
| Staunton-Stuarts Draft, VA | 40 | $72,960 +56% |
| Johnstown, PA | 110 | $70,450 +50% |
| Trenton-Princeton, NJ | 140 | $69,740 +49% |
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 58. 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.