Compare Occupations

	Highway Maintenance Workers	Hazardous Materials Removal Workers	Maintenance and Repair Workers, General	Traffic Technicians
SUMMARY	53% Moderate Risk	28% Low Risk	38% Low Risk	45% Moderate Risk
JOB SCORE	4.4/10	3.8/10	6.1/10	3.7/10
POLLING	44% (Moderate Risk, Based on 26 votes)	58% (Moderate Risk, Based on 16 votes)	33% (Low Risk, Based on 103 votes)	69% (High Risk, Based on 18 votes)
GROWTH by year 2034	3.0%	1.0%	3.8%	3.7%
WAGES	$49,070 or $23.59 per hour	$48,490 or $23.31 per hour	$48,620 or $23.37 per hour	$58,480 or $28.11 per hour
VOLUME as of 2024	151,750	50,570	1,531,700	7,580
SNOWFLAKE [?] The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
DESCRIPTION	Maintain highways, municipal and rural roads, airport runways, and rights-of-way. Duties include patching broken or eroded pavement and repairing guard rails, highway markers, and snow fences. May also mow or clear brush from along road, or plow snow from roadway.	Identify, remove, pack, transport, or dispose of hazardous materials, including asbestos, lead-based paint, waste oil, fuel, transmission fluid, radioactive materials, or contaminated soil. Specialized training and certification in hazardous materials handling or a confined entry permit are generally required. May operate earth-moving equipment or trucks.	Perform work involving the skills of two or more maintenance or craft occupations to keep machines, mechanical equipment, or the structure of a building in repair. Duties may involve pipe fitting; HVAC maintenance; insulating; welding; machining; carpentry; repairing electrical or mechanical equipment; installing, aligning, and balancing new equipment; and repairing buildings, floors, or stairs.	Conduct field studies to determine traffic volume, speed, effectiveness of signals, adequacy of lighting, and other factors influencing traffic conditions, under direction of traffic engineer.

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Automation Risk

Each occupation shows a probability of automation. A higher score means machines and algorithms are more likely to take over the role in the future.

Job Score

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Polling Data

Thousands of visitors cast their votes on how “automatable” each job feels. These community insights are shown alongside the calculated probabilities.

Growth & Wages

See how fast each occupation is projected to grow and what people earn on average. High wages don’t always mean high security — automation risk still matters.

Volume of Workers

Explore how many people currently work in each occupation and in which year the data was recorded. Popularity can affect how disruptive automation will be for the wider economy.

The Snowflake Diagram

Each snowflake visualises the balance between automation risk, wages, growth, and job volume. Bigger and greener areas mean stronger performance in that dimension.

Use this comparison page to research careers, guide students, or simply explore the future of work. All data is regularly updated to keep the results relevant.