COOKED
The work is threading yarn, splicing broken ends, doffing full bobbins, and watching machines for defects inside a controlled, repeatable mill environment — exactly the profile modern automatic winders, robotic doffers, and machine-vision defect detection are built to eliminate. Language AI is not the threat here; capital equipment is, and the industry has been shedding these jobs for decades through consolidation and offshoring. The hands are still needed for splicing, jam clearing, and maintenance today, which is the only real buffer.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $29,790 → $38,670 +3.8% 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
-9% 21,700 → 19,800 on the projections basis
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -9% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
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.
~2,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
ConerBallerBeamerCoilerComberCopperDrawerFramerHankerReelerWarperWinderBlockerCreelerQuillerSkeinerSlubberSpinnerSpoolerThrowerTwisterRebeamerRedrawerRewinder
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Automatic winders with electronic yarn clearers and splicers already do the core end-joining and package-building unattended, and robotic doffers handle bobbin change on new lines — what keeps this at 10 rather than 4 is that a tender still creels heavy roving, clears wrapped-around-roller jams by hand, sets tension and traverse for an unfamiliar count, and catches slubs the clearer's settings were never tuned for.
Some physical or field component You are on your feet the whole shift walking a machine alley in lint, noise, and heat, reaching into moving frames to piece up ends — real physical work, but it is one fixed building, known machine geometry, and a floor plan that never changes, which is why this sits at 11 and not with linemen and roofers at 17.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no state licence, no board, no certificate that legally has to exist before you touch a twister — the mill's OSHA lockout/tagout and machine-guard training is a condition of employment, not a credential you own or that anyone would have to replace.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Speed, tension, twist multiplier, and package density come off a style card set by the process engineer, and the decision that is actually yours is when to stop the frame and call maintenance — a real call with waste consequences, but bounded by written procedure, which is what puts it at 4 rather than in the discretion 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 (10/20 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 (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (2/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (4/20) 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 7 of this occupation's 28 points (25%).
Embodiment (11/20) 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.
Tire Repairers and Changers EXPOSED
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 37/100 — EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift within the mill: as automatic winders with splicers and robotic doffers take the routine tending tier, the surviving headcount is the person who sets up and changes over machines for new yarn counts, diagnoses recurring end-breaks to a specific traveler/tension/humidity cause, and clears novel jams. This is already visible in US mills where 'operator' postings have become 'setter/technician' postings requiring PLC and mechanical troubleshooting. Raises task_resistance only for the remaining fraction of the workforce, not the count of jobs.
Product-mix shift toward high-value technical and specialty yarns — aramid, carbon, glass, conductive filament for defense and aerospace textiles — run in short lots on older or modified machines where automatic splicing is unreliable and changeovers are frequent. Berry Amendment and DFARS domestic-sourcing demand for US-made technical textiles is the visible driver.
If reshored technical-textile plants push lot-level quality accountability down to the machine setter — signed setup sheets and first-article yarn checks tied to AS9100/ISO 9001 traceability for aerospace or ballistic end use — the role owns a consequential call (release or scrap a lot) rather than just tending. Watch for mills adopting operator-signed first-piece inspection under customer source-inspection requirements.
The limit. No plausible route to liability_shield or trust_premium: no license attaches to yarn winding and no buyer of yarn pays a premium for human-tended winding. Even with every lever above, the realistic ceiling is roughly the high 30s, and it applies to a smaller surviving workforce — the levers raise the resistance of the remaining job, not the number of jobs. Capital equipment cost, not AI capability, sets the pace.
| Dalton, GA | 3,370 | $38,670 +0% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 1,270 | $36,800 -5% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,110 | $43,870 +13% |
| Winston-Salem, NC | 780 | $37,070 -4% |
| Greensboro-High Point, NC | 620 | $37,290 -4% |
| Chattanooga, TN-GA | 510 | $40,140 +4% |
| Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC | 430 | $38,280 -1% |
| Providence-Warwick, RI-MA | 320 | $38,350 -1% |
| Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN | 60 | $54,350 +41% |
| Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA | 250 | $47,750 +23% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 100 | $47,230 +22% |
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 28. 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.