Electricians Face Low Automation Risk, High Demand Amid Growing Industry Needs
Last Updated: 2026-05-29T02:48:39.002-04:00
An April 2026 report from the construction scheduling platform Planera finds that electricians have a low risk of being automated. The report, which analyzed over 55 manual professions, found that electricians have a 14% automation risk. The study also found that there will be a shortage of electricians through 2026, with over 80,000 new positions expected to be created in the United States. This is due to a number of factors, including aging infrastructure, the growing popularity of electric vehicles, and the transition to renewable energy.
The report also found that a number of other jobs in the construction and maintenance trades are also at low risk of being automated. These include firefighters (9%), police officers and sheriff’s patrol officers (13%), and emergency medical technicians (7%).
The report’s author, an automation expert from Planera, said that “the irony is that AI data centers, the very technology driving automation fears, need electricians to get built and kept running. That’s about as future-proof as a job can get.”
In related news, students in the Chariho Electrical Technology class in Westerly, Rhode Island, recently visited ProSystems Integration, an automation company. The students learned about the career opportunities available in the industrial side of the electrical field.
The owner of ProSystems Integration, John Brunelle, said that “technology-wise, the opportunities in the industry are huge. Everybody wants to hire young talent because they know how to use computers and tablets.”
His son, Jesse Brunelle, who is an engineer at the company, said that he wants to “expose this whole world of the electrical industry to students who don’t get to see this side of things. There’s plenty of career opportunities in this industry as well that aren’t seen too often.”
The instructor of the Chariho Electrical Technology class, Ryan Northup, said that the field trip was a “perfect real-world application” for the students. He said that it gave them “some foreground of what we’re doing in class and now they can actually envision some of what they were working on.”
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