Will AI replace Highway Maintenance Workers?

What this score means

Highway Maintenance Workers is among the least exposed roles in Construction & Trades. Most of what the job involves still sits outside what current AI can do, even as the tools around it keep changing. At 11 out of 100 it scores 3 points below the Construction & Trades average of 14. Across the 3 sources behind this baseline, individual estimates run from 5 to 20, so the score is a weighted consensus rather than any single figure.

The number is a consensus estimate for the typical version of the role, built from published academic and industry research scored occupation by occupation. It is not a prediction about any individual. How scoring works

What this job actually involves

Exposure follows the work itself rather than the job title, so it is worth seeing what the role is made of. These are the tasks O*NET records for Highway Maintenance Workers, most central first, showing 12 of 19.

• 01Set out signs and cones around work areas to divert traffic.
• 02Flag motorists to warn them of obstacles or repair work ahead.
• 03Perform preventative maintenance on vehicles and heavy equipment.
• 04Drive trucks to transport crews and equipment to work sites.
• 05Erect, install, or repair guardrails, road shoulders, berms, highway markers, warning signals, and highway lighting, using hand tools and power tools.
• 06Clean and clear debris from culverts, catch basins, drop inlets, ditches, and other drain structures.
• 07Drive heavy equipment and vehicles with adjustable attachments to sweep debris from paved surfaces, mow grass and weeds, remove snow and ice, and spread salt and sand.
• 08Haul and spread sand, gravel, and clay to fill washouts and repair road shoulders.
• 09Inspect, clean, and repair drainage systems, bridges, tunnels, and other structures.
• 10Remove litter and debris from roadways, including debris from rock and mud slides.
• 11Dump, spread, and tamp asphalt, using pneumatic tampers, to repair joints and patch broken pavement.
• 12Perform roadside landscaping work, such as clearing weeds and brush, and planting and trimming trees.

Task statements from O*NET by the National Center for O*NET Development, used under CC BY 4.0. The tasks are descriptive; the exposure score above is ours.

The research behind this score

This baseline aggregates 3 research sources that scored Highway Maintenance Workers for AI and automation exposure. More recent, higher confidence studies carry more weight in the final number.

• 01Anthropic Economic Index 2026 - AI Task Exposure · 2026
• 02GPTs are GPTs: Labor Market Impact Potential of LLMs · 2024
• 03AI Occupational Exposure to Language Modeling · 2023

Also covers

Asphalt Raker · Caltrans Equipment Operator · Certified Flagger · Construction Flagger · Equipment Operator (EO) · Flagger · Highway Maintainer · Highway Maintenance Crew Worker and related titles

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