Why the lift still waits for a person
Rigging is decided at the hook. A rigger sizes up a load, picks cables, slings, shackles and blocks, works out where the center of gravity sits, and attaches the gear so nothing shifts in the air. That judgment happens on a site that changes hour by hour: mud, wind, tight clearances, a load that is heavier on one end than the drawing says.
Software can help with the math. It can lay out a lift plan, check a sling angle, and flag a capacity problem before anyone climbs. What it cannot do is feel a frayed wire rope, reject a damaged shackle, or stand where the crane operator can see the hand signal. Those steps are physical, they are regulated, and someone has to sign for them.
So the honest story for riggers is task erosion rather than a job disappearing. Planning and paperwork move toward software first. Hooking steel, testing the rig and controlling the movement of heavy equipment stay with trained people. The robotics tier this work would need is a dexterous humanoid, which is the hardest class of machine to build and the slowest to arrive on a job site.
What software handles, what it assists, and what stays manual
The slice AI can handle on its own today is small: 0% of task time. The task split above marks which steps sit there, and they are the desk-side parts of the trade, not the parts done in a harness. That share feeds the coverage score, 7 out of 100, which you can read about on the Can AI Do It page.
A second slice is assisted work: 8% of task time. Here a tool speeds a rigger up without taking the task over. Load calculators, digital lift plans and sensor data on crane load cells all shorten the planning stage. A person still checks the output and owns the call.
The rest, 92% of task time, needs a person on the ground. That is where inspecting rigging gear, attaching and securing loads, signaling operators and dismantling the rig after the pick all live. It is also why the headline figure for this job is 84 out of 100 (higher is safer).
What has actually been tested
Not much, in this trade specifically. The parity grade here is D, which means no study has yet put an automated system against certified riggers on the same real lifts and scored the results. There are lift-planning tools and there is crane automation in fixed industrial settings, but neither has been measured head to head against a rigging crew in published work.
What would settle it: an audited field trial on mixed, unfamiliar loads, comparing machine-planned and machine-executed rigging against a certified crew, scored by independent inspectors on setup time, load control and defects found during gear checks. Until something like that exists, no parity number belongs on this page. How the grades work is set out in Is It Better Than A Person?.
When the picture could shift
Most likely after 2045 (8 in 10 of our scenarios). The method behind that window is explained on the replacement-year page.
Two things could pull it earlier. Repetitive industrial lifts inside plants and ports are the easiest to automate, because the loads, the paths and the rigging points repeat. And smart hardware is improving: load cells, sensorized hooks and automated hoists can take over parts of a controlled pick.
Two things hold it back. The work is overwhelmingly physical, and the machine class it would need is a dexterous humanoid, not an arm bolted to a floor. Liability and certification also slow adoption: a rigging failure kills people, so sites keep a qualified, accountable person on the hook. For the wider picture on machines doing physical trades, see the guide on humanoid robots and physical jobs.
How riggers stay needed
Lean into the parts that carry responsibility. First, gear inspection: knowing when a sling, shackle or wire rope comes out of service, and being willing to stop a lift. Second, judging unfamiliar loads, where the weight, balance and pick points are not on any drawing. Third, running the communication on site, from the signal to the crane operator to the brief with the crew.
Two skills pay off. Get fluent with digital lift-planning and load-calculation software, so you check its work instead of waiting for someone else to. And get comfortable with documentation and inspection records kept in apps, since that is where assisted work is moving fastest.
What to do: Put your rigging certifications and your lift-planning software experience on the same page of your resume, so the planning side counts as yours.
Close trades are worth comparing. Look at commercial divers, who rig underwater, and the two cab-side jobs riggers work with daily: crane and tower operators and hoist and winch operators. You can put any two of them side by side on the compare tool.
For context on the trade group, see the other installation, maintenance and repair occupations family and the construction sector page. The pay and employment figures shown above come from BLS. How every score on this page is built is written up in the methodology, and jobs with a similar profile are collected in the safest jobs from AI list.