SAFE
The core of the job is physical: suctioning airways, managing ventilator circuits at the bedside, delivering nebulized meds, drawing and interpreting arterial blood gases, assisting intubation, and running codes. AI can already draft charting, calculate weaning parameters, flag vent alarms, and score sleep studies, but nothing automates a hands-on airway emergency in an ICU. State licensure plus RRT credentialing means a human is legally on the hook for therapy delivered under physician order.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $61,330 → $82,280 +7.3% 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
+12.1% 139,600 → 156,400 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +12.1% more of these jobs by 2034. Note that safe does not mean well paid — several of the fastest-growing resistant occupations are among the lowest paid on the register.
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.
~8,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Staff TherapistOxygen TherapistInhalation TherapistRespiratory Therapist (RT)Staff Respiratory TherapistTravel Respiratory TherapistHospital Respiratory TherapistRespiratory Care Practitioner (RCP)Certified Respiratory Therapist (CRT)Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT)Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Respiratory TherapistTravel Registered Respiratory Therapist (Travel RRT)NICU Respiratory Therapist (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Respiratory Therapist)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Closed-loop ventilator modes (ASV, SmartCare), auto-scored polysomnography, and protocol-driven weaning have already eaten the calculation and documentation layer, but the 12-hour shift is still physically titrating PEEP at the bedside, breaking down a circuit that's rainout-flooded, bagging a desaturating patient during a turn, and performing bronchial hygiene on a post-op patient who won't cough — which is why this sits at 15 rather than in the low mixed band.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Nasotracheal suctioning, mask-fitting for BiPAP on an agitated patient, radial artery puncture, hand-bagging during transport down a hallway to CT, and neonatal surfactant administration are all done with your hands on an unstable human body in a room whose conditions you don't control, which is about as embodied as clinical work gets short of surgery.
Licensed human required and personally liable All 50 states except Alaska license respiratory care, NBRC RRT/CRT credentialing gates hiring, and your license is what's on the line if you extubate early or misread an ABG — the 15 rather than 19 reflects that you practice under physician order and institutional protocol, so the intensivist absorbs the diagnostic decision you're executing.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls You decide when a weaning trial has failed before the numbers say so, whether a rising CO2 warrants escalating to intubation now or riding out one more hour of BiPAP, and how to manage an airway you can't secure — calls made in minutes at the bedside, with the physician often at the other end of a phone.
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 (15/20 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 (15/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (14/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (15/20) 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 44 of this occupation's 78 points (56%).
Embodiment (19/20) 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 86/100, still SAFE.
Formal RT-led protocol authority — rapid response / airway teams and ventilator liberation protocols where the RRT independently titrates and decides extubation readiness under standing order rather than per-order execution; AARC has pushed 'protocol-directed therapy' and some systems already run RT-driven weaning and RT-led ECMO specialist roles
Task-mix shift: if AI absorbs the routine tier (sleep study scoring, vent flowsheet charting, nebulizer round documentation, ABG trend interpretation), the residual day is airway emergencies, difficult intubations, ECMO circuit management, and neonatal transport — the judgment tier. Watch for hospitals folding scored polysomnography and charting into software while RT FTEs shift to ICU/ECMO/transport
State practice acts or Joint Commission standards explicitly requiring an RRT (not an RN or tech) to verify and countersign closed-loop ventilator weaning adjustments made by algorithmic modes (e.g., Hamilton INTELLiVENT-ASV, Draeger SmartCare) before they persist; several state respiratory care boards already restrict ventilator management to licensed RTs, and CMS conditions of participation could name the credential for AI-assisted settings
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: patients are intubated, sedated, or coding and do not choose or pay for their respiratory therapist; the buyer is a hospital cost center. Embodiment is already near ceiling at 19. Note that the biggest risk to this occupation is not AI substitution but staffing-ratio dilution — algorithmic vent management used to justify covering more beds per RT, which shrinks headcount without touching any dimension score.
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 7,010 | $104,640 +27% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 7,010 | $110,490 +34% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 3,630 | $80,450 -2% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 3,620 | $87,060 +6% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 3,010 | $84,080 +2% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 2,990 | $88,790 +8% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 2,670 | $95,520 +16% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 2,620 | $80,880 -2% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 1,060 | $149,680 +82% |
| Vallejo, CA | 190 | $136,200 +66% |
| Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | 70 | $134,880 +64% |
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 78. 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.