EXPOSED
The modal worker splits time between field data collection with GPS/total stations and office work reducing that data in CAD/GIS — and the office half is being eaten by automated point-cloud processing, drone photogrammetry pipelines, and AI-assisted feature extraction from imagery. Field work still requires a body holding a rod on uneven ground, locating monuments, and setting stakes, which is why this isn't COOKED, but crew sizes are shrinking as one operator plus a drone or scanner replaces a three-person party. The technician holds no license and doesn't sign the plat; the licensed surveyor above them owns the liability, so there's no regulatory moat protecting this rung.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $45,010 → $54,240 -3.6% 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
+4.5% 59,400 → 62,100 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +4.5% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
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.
~7,600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RodmanStakerChainmanLevelmanSurveyorDraftsmanMosaicistMap EditorMap DrafterTransit ManMap CompilerStake DriverStake SetterChain CarrierSurvey RodmanMapping EditorPlane TablemanTransit WorkerMarine SurveyorStereo CompilerSurveyor HelperAx Survey WorkerCompass OperatorSurvey Assistant
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier The field half — chaining through brush to recover a rebar-and-cap monument, setting grade stakes on a cut slope, holding the rod where GPS loses fix under canopy — still needs a person on site, but the office half (traverse reduction, point-cloud registration, breaklines and contours in Civil 3D) is exactly the repetitive work robotic total stations, drone flight-planning software, and automated feature extraction already do, which is what puts this at 9 rather than mid-teens.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments A 14 reflects that a typical day is spent on active construction sites, road right-of-way, and raw parcels — walking uneven terrain hauling a tripod and data collector, dealing with traffic, weather, ticks, and locked gates — with only the CAD reduction happening at a desk, so the environment is uncontrolled but the crew isn't doing structural or confined-space work that would push it higher.
No licence, no signature requirement State surveying statutes license the PLS who seals the plat; the technician's field notes and CAD drafting carry no legal weight on their own, and while some hold NSPS certified survey technician credentials, no jurisdiction requires it to run a rod or a scanner, hence a 4 rather than zero.
Meaningful discretion There is genuine call-making in the field — deciding a found pipe is the original corner rather than a fence post, choosing where to set control so the traverse closes, flagging that the deed call doesn't match the occupation line — but the boundary determination itself goes up to the PLS, so the discretion is procedural and reversible, landing at 7 rather than low teens.
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 (9/20 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 39 points (41%).
Embodiment (14/20) 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.
Surveyors SAFE
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 54/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift within the existing job: once point-cloud registration, breakline extraction and drafting cleanup are fully automated, the residual day is monument recovery from ambiguous record evidence (old deeds, fence lines, occupation lines) and construction staking against conflicting plan sets. This occupation genuinely has a routine CAD tier and a boundary-evidence tier; the score rises only for the survivors doing the second tier, and headcount falls at the same time.
Growth of subsurface utility engineering work under ASCE 38-22 quality levels: Quality Level A requires physical exposure (vacuum excavation) and direct measurement of the utility, and QL-B requires walking geophysical designation on site. State DOT contracts (e.g., FDOT, TxDOT SUE specifications) already mandate ASCE 38 levels on design surveys, which pins a body to the dirt in a way drone imagery cannot substitute for.
State board rules that name the field crew, not just the sealing surveyor. Watch for licensing-board rule changes requiring that the person who recovered each monument and made each measurement be identified in the record of survey, plus minimum direct-supervision ratios capping how many drone/scanner-derived deliverables one licensee may seal per period. NCEES model-law discussion of 'responsible charge' when data is machine-collected is the venue where this would appear. Also watch state adoption of a Certified Survey Technician (NSPS CST) requirement in DOT prequalification.
Field notes are already admissible evidence in boundary litigation. If firms and insurers formalize a 'party chief of record' who signs field notes and monument-recovery decisions — driven by professional-liability carriers pricing boundary-dispute claims and demanding documented human sign-off on machine-derived positions — the ambiguity calls become attributably owned rather than absorbed upward by the licensee.
The limit. No realistic route to a trust premium: buyers of survey deliverables pay for the licensed surveyor's seal and for schedule, never for a human technician specifically. The structural cap on this occupation is that the license sits one rung above it; every liability lever listed works only if a board or an insurer chooses to reach down and name the technician, and the cheaper institutional response is always to concentrate more sealing authority in fewer licensees running more automation.
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 2,650 | $49,570 -9% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,010 | $45,460 -16% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,930 | $57,530 +6% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 1,510 | $57,890 +7% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,280 | $48,810 -10% |
| Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 1,170 | $48,160 -11% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 1,120 | $58,480 +8% |
| Raleigh-Cary, NC | 1,120 | $49,150 -9% |
| San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, CA | 40 | $101,270 +87% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 860 | $92,700 +71% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 360 | $84,360 +56% |
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 39. 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.