EXPOSED
The core of this job — pulling fiber and coax through attics, crawl spaces and riser closets, terminating connectors, mounting ONTs and antennas, splicing, and troubleshooting a live circuit at a customer's premises — is exactly the physical work robotics cannot touch this decade. What AI does erode is the diagnostic and paperwork layer: remote line testing, automated fault localization, provisioning, and truck-roll avoidance already cut the number of visits per subscriber. There is no license requirement to hide behind, so headcount tracks build cycles and remote-diagnostic maturity rather than regulation.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $57,910 → $63,890 -11.7% 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
-4.2% 156,900 → 150,400 on the projections basis
Shrinking, but not obviously because of AI
The BLS projects -4.2% by 2034, but at 55/100 this work is only moderately exposed — not the profile of a job current AI can simply do. Occupations shrink for many reasons, and the score does not point at automation as this one's cause.
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.
~13,200 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
WirerSplicerInstallerSwitchmanTest WorkerInside WirerTest DeskmanTicker WirerToll MechanicCall Box WirerNetwork CablerRelay AdjusterRelay MechanicFacility WorkerMatrix RepairerTest TechnicianWire TechnicianCable TechnicianEquipment TesterField TechnicianPower TechnicianService EngineerSound TechnicianStation Mechanic
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Fusion-splicing a 12-strand ribbon at a pedestal, fishing drop cable through a 1950s wall cavity, and re-terminating a punch-down block on a live PBX are hand-eye tasks with per-site variation no software can execute — the 15 rather than 18 reflects that the fault-finding half of your callout, the part where you used to trace which pair was shorted, is increasingly handed to you pre-diagnosed by the OSS before you leave the yard.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work off ladders and in bucket trucks, in attics above 120°F, in crawl spaces, on rooftops mounting microwave and DAS antennas, and inside cramped riser and MDF closets — uncontrolled customer premises that differ every ticket, which is why this sits at 18 and not lower with bench-repair techs.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licence gates this work; you may hold BICSI, SCTE or a manufacturer cert and an OSHA 10, and in some jurisdictions a low-voltage registration, but the carrier's engineering authority signs off on the network and the 4 reflects certification that helps you get hired, not statute that protects your headcount.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether an intermittent is the drop, the splitter, the ONT or the far-end provisioning, and whether to open a wall or reroute — real discretion, but the decision is bounded by installation standards, signal-level specs and escalation to NOC engineering, so it lands at 10 rather than in the ambiguous-high-stakes band.
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 (4/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (8/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (10/20) 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 22 of this occupation's 55 points (40%).
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.
Avionics Technicians 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 75/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: as remote line test and automated fault localization strip out the easy truck rolls, the remaining dispatches are the ones automation could not resolve — intermittent faults, mixed-media plant, interference hunting, customer-premises wiring of unknown provenance. The surviving job is the escalation tier
NFPA 70 (NEC) Article 770/800 plus local AHJ inspection sign-off being enforced on residential fiber drops and riser penetrations, including firestop certification (UL-classified firestop systems require an installer of record) — makes a specific human accountable for penetration and plenum-cable compliance
Public-safety and critical-infrastructure work carrying explicit accountability: NG911 and FirstNet site maintenance, hospital DAS, and BDA/ERRCS in-building public-safety radio, where IFC 510 requires annual testing and a signed report from a qualified technician
BEAD-funded and state broadband builds imposing as-built documentation, OTDR trace submission and location-accuracy audits, so field work includes evidentiary testing that cannot be generated remotely
State low-voltage/limited-energy licensing expanding to cover premises fiber and inside-wire work — e.g. states like Oregon, Washington, Alabama and Texas already require a limited-energy electrician license or registered technician endorsement for structured cabling; if more states adopt this and utilities/ISPs are barred from using unlicensed subcontractors, a named licensed tech signs the installation record
FAA/FCC RF-safety and tower-climb regimes (OSHA's communication tower enforcement initiative, NATE/TIRAP credentialing, carrier requirements for competent-person sign-off on antenna and rooftop work) hardening into a required certified signer for each site closeout package
The limit. Trust premium has no realistic route: the buyer is a carrier or an MSO procurement department buying dispatches at a contracted rate, and the end subscriber does not choose the installer or pay extra for one. Embodiment is already near ceiling and cannot rise. Every liability lever above is state-by-state and covers only part of the work; the routine drop install remains a low-margin subcontracted dispatch whose volume tracks build cycles and remote-diagnostic maturity regardless of licensing.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 5,820 | $75,900 +19% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 4,680 | $60,340 -6% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,360 | $73,440 +15% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 4,300 | $70,790 +11% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 3,810 | $62,230 -3% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 3,480 | $69,820 +9% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 2,850 | $59,850 -6% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,720 | $69,800 +9% |
| Anchorage, AK | 350 | $101,020 +58% |
| Fairbanks-College, AK | 60 | $97,860 +53% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,850 | $92,290 +44% |
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 55. 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.