SAFE
The job is hands inside a hot, dirty, geometrically awkward engine bay: pulling suspension components, chasing an intermittent electrical fault through a wiring harness, replacing timing chains. AI already reads diagnostic trouble codes, suggests probable causes from service bulletins, and writes the repair order narrative — but no robot removes a seized exhaust bolt on a 12-year-old Silverado. The real medium-term pressure is EV drivetrains needing far fewer scheduled repairs, not language models.
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $42,090 → $50,620 -3.8% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+4.2% 805,600 → 839,200 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +4.2% more of these jobs by 2034. Note that safe does not mean well paid — several of the fastest-growing resistant occupations are among the lowest paid on the register.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~70,000 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
FramerBrakemanDetailerFramemanMechanicBody WirerBrake LinerWheel TunerWheelwrightCar MechanicBrake RelinerChassis WirerLeak RepairerLine MechanicTear Down ManWheel AlignerBrake AdjusterBrake RepairerHeavy RepairerLight AdjusterWheel AdjusterAudio InstallerClutch MechanicEngine Mechanic
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation A P0301 code tells you a cylinder-1 misfire and nothing more — the work is swapping coils, doing a compression test, backprobing an injector connector, and none of that gets done by software that can only read the code; 17 rather than 20 because scan-tool guided diagnostics, OEM procedure lookup, and estimate writing are already being taken off your plate.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Broken exhaust studs, rusted subframe bolts, transmissions on a jack, brake dust, and reaching one arm past an intake manifold to feel for a wrench you can't see — every fastener is in a different place on every vehicle and half of them are corroded, which is the ceiling case for physical work.
Certification preferred, not legally required ASE certification is what shops advertise and what pays better, but no state requires a licence to turn wrenches; the shop carries the garage-keepers liability and the comeback, and only emissions/safety-inspection work ties a specific certified individual's number to a signature.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether that noise is a wheel bearing or a CV joint before anyone pays for parts, and whether a vehicle leaves the bay with brake lines you thought were marginal; capped at 13 because OEM service procedures, torque specs, and repair-vs-replace guidelines define the answer once you've identified the fault.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (17/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (5/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (12/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 30 of this occupation's 67 points (45%).
Embodiment (20/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 84/100, still SAFE.
State-level ADAS/safety-system recalibration mandates: several states (and NHTSA rulemaking petitions) are moving toward requiring a certified technician to sign off on post-collision calibration of cameras/radar and on EV high-voltage battery pack service. If a named, certified individual must sign the calibration record and carries personal exposure when a lane-keep system fails, this rises materially. I-CAR and OEM certification programs plus insurer repair-network requirements are already the visible motion here.
Right-to-repair implementation (Massachusetts Data Access Law, Maine's 2023 referendum, the federal REPAIR Act) putting full telematics and diagnostic authority in independent shops — the tech, not the OEM's remote system, owns the go/no-go call on whether a vehicle is roadworthy after high-voltage or structural work.
Task-mix shift as code-reading and repair-order drafting are absorbed: the residual job concentrates on intermittent faults, corrosion, prior bad repairs, and high-voltage EV pack diagnosis where the failure is not represented in any DTC. Genuine two-tier occupation — the routine brake-and-oil tier is already leaking to quick-lube channels.
State safety-inspection regimes (PA, NY, TX, VA) extending from mechanical inspection to mandatory periodic inspection of EV battery state-of-health and ADAS sensor alignment, with the inspecting technician's license number on the certificate and license revocation for false certification.
Growth of OEM-certified EV/high-voltage repair networks where insurers or manufacturers will only warrant work done by a named certified technician, making the individual's credential the thing purchased rather than the shop's rate.
The limit. Embodiment is already maxed and cannot rise. The dominant medium-term risk to this occupation is volume — EV drivetrains needing fewer scheduled repairs — and no liability or trust lever offsets a shrinking work pool; a higher score here would describe a safer job at fewer headcount.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 28,420 | $57,760 +14% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 22,330 | $62,820 +24% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 20,140 | $55,320 +9% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 17,690 | $49,720 -2% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 14,910 | $50,940 +1% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 12,700 | $58,460 +15% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 12,310 | $51,450 +2% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 12,030 | $61,860 +22% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 3,040 | $77,840 +54% |
| Napa, CA | 160 | $76,450 +51% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 7,270 | $76,030 +50% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 67. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.