EXPOSED
The core of this job — fitting, grinding, polishing, and hand-benching die components to a few thousandths, then troubleshooting a mold that's flashing or a stamping die that's galling on the press — is tactile, iterative physical work that no current robot does. What is automating is the upstream half: CAD interpretation, CAM toolpath generation, feed-and-speed selection, tolerance stack-up math, and inspection reporting, all of which AI plus modern CAM handles increasingly well. The real threat to this occupation isn't a robot toolmaker; it's fewer toolrooms, offshored tooling, and one experienced maker supervising more automated machining than before.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $53,920 → $64,050 -5.0% 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
-10.8% 55,200 → 49,300 on the projections basis
Shrinking, but not obviously because of AI
The BLS projects -10.8% by 2034, but at 54/100 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.
~4,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
JigmanSawsmithCam MakerDie BakerDie MakerJig MakerSaw MakerToolsmithDie CutterDie SetterDie SinkerGage MakerHub CutterTool MakerDie DesignerDie FinisherDie MechanicForcer MakerTool LiaisonBroach SetterDie AssemblerDie MachinistFixture MakerTool Mechanic
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation At 14 the split is roughly two-thirds bench and press-side work that resists digitisation — spotting a die with bluing, stoning a parting line, shimming and re-timing a progressive die between hits — against a third that CAM software and generative toolpathing already do better than a human at a terminal, which is why this isn't an 18.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments 17 reflects work done at the surface grinder, EDM tank, and then on the customer's 400-ton press floor, where you're crawling into a die shoe, feeling for burrs and drag marks, and reworking steel that's still hot — uncontrolled enough to warrant near-top marks, short of 20 only because much of the cutting happens in an enclosed shop.
No licence, no signature requirement 2 because nothing legally stops an employer from putting an unlicensed operator on your jobs — journeyman cards and NIMS credentials are pay-scale and hiring signals, not statutory gatekeepers, and no regulator requires a certified die maker's sign-off on a mold before it runs production.
Meaningful discretion 13 sits at the top of genuine discretion because you decide whether a die gets welded and re-cut or scrapped, where to add draw relief, and how much springback to compensate — calls worth six figures in tooling and downtime — but a toolroom lead or engineering has sign-off above you, which keeps it out of the 14-plus 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 (14/20 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 (2/20) 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 (13/20) 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 23 of this occupation's 54 points (43%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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.
Sheet Metal Workers 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 67/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: as CAM programming, tolerance stack-up, and CMM inspection reporting get absorbed by AI-assisted software, the residual job is the judgment tier — die tryout, spotting/blueing a mold, diagnosing galling and flash, hand-benching to fit, and root-cause on press. This tier is genuinely tactile and iterative; watch for job postings that drop 'CNC programming' from the requirements while keeping 'die tryout and troubleshooting'.
Formalized PPAP/AIAG-VDA process-sign-off practice in automotive tooling where a named tooling engineer or lead toolmaker signs die buy-off and capability (Cpk) acceptance, making the buy-off call attributable to a person rather than a supplier entity. Watch OEM supplier manuals (GM, Ford, Stellantis) for named-individual buy-off requirements.
Reshoring of stamping and mold tooling under Section 232/301 tariff structures and IRA/CHIPS domestic-content rules would put more tryout and repair work physically in US toolrooms rather than offshoring the whole die; the repair/maintenance share of the work is the least robot-tractable part.
Narrow route only: prototype and short-run tooling for defense and aerospace primes where ITAR and DFARS 252.225-7009 specialty-metals rules require identifiable US persons doing the work — buyers pay for the cleared human toolroom, not the tooling per se.
Safety-critical tooling (airbag housings, aerospace forgings, Class A medical molds) sits under AS9100/ISO 13485 process validation; a route to a real shield would be an FAA or FDA requirement that tooling used for a validated process be qualified by a named, certified individual — analogous to NDT Level III certification under SNT-TC-1A, which already personally attributes sign-off.
The limit. Even with every lever, this stays a shrinking-headcount occupation. None of the levers touch the actual threat: toolroom consolidation and one maker supervising more machines. A higher score here describes better-protected individual jobs, not more of them.
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 4,900 | $73,120 +14% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 3,750 | $61,180 -4% |
| Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood, MI | 1,540 | $64,650 +1% |
| Cleveland, OH | 1,280 | $64,070 +0% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,090 | $116,850 +82% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 950 | $78,020 +22% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 930 | $74,840 +17% |
| Milwaukee-Waukesha, WI | 830 | $68,120 +6% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,090 | $116,850 +82% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 130 | $97,560 +52% |
| Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY | 60 | $87,240 +36% |
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 54. 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.