Boilermakers
Typically requires High school diploma or equivalent
What is this page & how do I use it?
This is a research report for one career — the kind an analyst would write for a stock. The rating at the top is the neutral baseline (same for everyone); below it come the cases for and against, how the last official forecast for this career actually aged, and what the education path costs and pays.
How to use it: read the bulls-vs-bears case, then hit Score this career to weigh it against your other options with your own interests factored in.
Analyst take: Decent prospects — -2.4% projected growth, low AI exposure (3/100).
Moat (borrowed from investing — the water that defends a castle): how shielded this career is from AI. Wide = well-defended — few automatable tasks, built on skills few other jobs have.
The small grid is a style box (borrowed from Morningstar’s fund reports): the blue square places this career on reward (top row = high) versus risk (left column = low), against all 730 careers. Low uncertainty means the score leans mostly on measured data (growth, pay) rather than forward-looking bets, so it's comparatively solid.
- +Low AI exposure — resilient (3% of tasks exposed).
- +High pay — above 69% of careers ($73,340).
- −Projected to shrink (-2.4%).
In 2014, the U.S. government projected +9.2% growth for this career by 2024. What actually happened: -40.2%. Reality fell short of the forecast — a reminder that every number on this page is an estimate, and this is how the last one aged. Full back-test →