EXPOSED
Cutting, bending, placing and tying rebar per engineered drawings is heavy, dirty, outdoor work on uneven decks and in footings — language AI cannot touch it, and general-purpose robots are nowhere near it. The real pressure is mechanization inside the trade: shop-prefabricated rebar cages, CNC bending lines, and rebar-tying robots like TyBot on flat bridge decks and slabs eat the most repetitive hours. No license shields the job and the engineer, not the placer, signs the drawings, so protection comes almost entirely from the body and the jobsite.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $49,100 → $58,970 -3.9% 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
+4.6%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 13,800 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +4.6% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 51/100 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.
~1,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RodmanLaborerRodbusterIronworkerRebar TierRod BusterSteel TierIron WorkerRebar BenderRebar WorkerIron InstallerConcrete BusterConcrete WorkerRebar RodbusterField IronworkerRebar FabricatorSteel Rod BusterIronworker WelderConcrete Rod BusterJourneyman IronworkerReinforced IronworkerReinforcing Rod LayerStructural IronworkerReinforcing Iron Worker
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Wiring #8 bar into a column cage at height, walking mats on a mud footing, and hand-bending hooks to fit a congested beam-column joint are motion problems no model solves — the 17 rather than 20 reflects that flat-slab and bridge-deck tying, plus shop cutting and bending lists, are already being done by CNC lines and gantry-mounted tying robots.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You carry and place bar in trenches, on suspended decks and in rain, kneeling on grade all shift with tying tools and cutters, at genuine risk of impalement and struck-by injury — an 18 rather than 20 only because prefabricated cages set by crane shift a slice of the work into a controlled shop.
No licence, no signature requirement No state license or certification is required to place rebar; OSHA 1926.701 impalement rules and the inspector's checklist bind the contractor, and the EOR's stamp on the placing drawings carries the design liability, leaving you with the 4 points that come from being the person the inspector watches tie the lap splice.
Meaningful discretion Bar sizes, spacing, lap lengths and cover are all dimensioned on the placing drawings, so the 7 covers the real calls you make in the field — how to sequence congested mats, where to add ties and chairs so the cage doesn't shift under the pour, and when a conflict on the drawing has to go back to the engineer rather than be fudged.
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 (17/20 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 (4/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (5/20) 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 16 of this occupation's 51 points (31%).
Embodiment (18/20) 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 65/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift as TyBot-class machines and shop-prefab cages absorb flat-deck tying and straight-bar work: what remains is congested column/beam joints, seismic hooks and confinement details, splice-length and clearance calls in the field, and RFI-triggering conflicts between rebar and embeds/post-tension ducts. The remaining role is closer to a field detailer/foreman owning pour-stop decisions under time pressure. Watch for BLS/industry reclassification of hours toward supervisory placement.
Growth in seismic retrofit, bridge rehabilitation and nuclear/heavy-industrial work where placement is in existing congested structures — environments where prefab cages and gantry-mounted tying robots cannot be deployed. Federal IIJA bridge rehab funding already shifts the mix this way.
Adoption of a mandatory certified rebar-installer credential tied to inspection sign-off — the model already exists in ACI/CRSI certification and in special-inspection regimes: IBC Chapter 17 requires special inspection of reinforcing steel placement, and some jurisdictions (e.g. NYC DOB's licensed/certified trade requirements, California DSA school projects) already demand certified personnel. If a state or model code amendment required a certified ironworker of record to sign a rebar placement affidavit before concrete pour, personal accountability attaches to the placer rather than only the engineer.
If OSHA or a state plan tightens impalement-hazard and rebar-cage stability rules (1926.701(b) enforcement, cage bracing/lift-plan requirements after cage-collapse fatalities), a designated competent person for rebar cage erection would own consequential stability calls in writing.
The limit. No plausible route to trust premium: concrete buyers specify a code-compliant pour, not a human-tied one, and the finished work is buried. Embodiment is already near ceiling and can only fall as robotic tying widens beyond flat decks; the liability lever is the only one that meaningfully changes the profile, and it depends on code bodies choosing to place accountability at the trade rather than the engineer of record.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 1,500 | $51,860 -12% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 960 | $101,890 +73% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 760 | $50,910 -14% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 640 | $62,990 +7% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 520 | $59,820 +1% |
| Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 330 | $50,270 -15% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 300 | $48,570 -18% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 280 | $61,130 +4% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 270 | $102,080 +73% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 960 | $101,890 +73% |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 220 | $95,670 +62% |
Construction Dive reports a rebar-tying robot was used on a Wisconsin bridge construction project, reducing the time required for the task.
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