EXPOSED
The front half of this job — concept sketching, mood boards, form exploration, rendering, and spec-sheet writing — is exactly what image and text models now do in minutes, and clients have noticed. What holds is the back half: physically handling prototypes, tuning ergonomics and material feel, negotiating design-for-manufacture constraints with tooling engineers, and owning the call on which concept ships. Most industrial designers at the national median spend a large share of their week on the automatable front half, which is why this lands mid-EXPOSED rather than safe.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $68,890 → $83,910 -2.6% 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
+3.2% 30,600 → 31,600 on the projections basis
Exposed, but growing
AI can already do a lot of these tasks, and the BLS still expects +3.2% more of these jobs by 2034. Demand for the output is growing faster than the work is being automated away — the mechanism BLS gives for software developers, and the combination people most often misread as an error.
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.
~2,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
DesignerEngineerToy MakerBody StylistColor ExpertRug DesignerToy DesignerBike DesignerBoat DesignerColor AdvisorGame DesignerMold DesignerSign DesignerTile DesignerCloth DesignerProduct ExpertRobot DesignerDesign EngineerFabric DesignerProduct ManagerSilver DesignerBicycle DesignerCeramic DesignerColor Consultant
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier An 8 reflects that ideation sketches, keyshot/renders, packaging graphics, and CAD surface variants — historically a third to half of billable hours — can now be generated or iterated by prompt, while GD&T-tolerance drawings, draft-angle and undercut fixes for injection molds, and hand-tuning grip geometry off a printed part still need you at the bench, so it sits at the boundary rather than in the mixed-safe teens.
Some physical or field component A 9 is earned by the SLA/FDM print queue, foam and clay models, calipers on competitor teardowns, and press-side visits during first-article runs — real physical work, but conducted in your own shop and the supplier's clean factory floor rather than in uncontrolled field conditions, which is what keeps it under 13.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no state licence for industrial design and IDSA membership carries no legal weight — when a handle cracks or a housing traps a finger, the PE who signed the structural analysis and the manufacturer's product-safety group absorb the claim, not you, hence a 2 rather than zero only because your name is on the design record.
Meaningful discretion An 11 fits owning genuinely contested calls — which of five concepts survives DFM review, whether to eat $40k in tooling change for a 2mm radius, where the cost/ergonomics line falls — while the decisions that carry real consequence downstream get ratified by product management, engineering sign-off, and safety review before anything cuts steel.
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 (8/20 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 (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (9/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (11/20) 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 22 of this occupation's 39 points (56%).
Embodiment (9/20) 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.
Civil Engineers EXPOSED
Electrical Engineers EXPOSED
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 55/100, still EXPOSED.
Task-mix shift: as generative concepting collapses to minutes, the retained job becomes DFM negotiation, tolerance/material selection, prototype iteration and tooling handoff — genuinely a second tier in this occupation. Recognisable if job postings shift from 'portfolio of renders' to 'experience with injection-mould tooling, GD&T, and CMF sign-off'.
Product-safety regimes attaching a named human designer to design records: EU General Product Safety Regulation (2023/988) and Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 technical-file requirements, plus the EU AI Act's provenance duties, could push manufacturers to require a named human to sign the design-history file and human-factors risk assessment. Also watch insurer/product-liability carriers demanding a named human of record for design-defect defence after any AI-generated-design failure litigation.
Consolidation of design roles into product-development engineering functions where the designer runs the physical prototype loop (foam/SLA models, ergonomic fit trials, CMF sample approval on the factory floor, overseas tooling trips) rather than delegating to model shops.
Formalising the ship/no-ship call: designer-of-record sign-off on human-factors and CMF decisions in a design-history file (already standard in medical-device design under FDA 21 CFR 820.30 / ISO 13485), spreading to juvenile products, appliances and mobility as recall exposure grows.
Narrow, brand-driven route only: 'designed by [named human]' as a marketing asset in premium furniture, housewares and consumer electronics, reinforced if a body like IDSA or an EU-style disclosure rule forces labelling of AI-generated design. Does not extend to the anonymous contract-design bulk of the occupation.
The limit. Realistic ceiling is mid-50s. There is no licensure for industrial design in the US, so the liability shield can only ever be contractual or documentary, not statutory — and the largest share of current weekly hours sits in exactly the visual-generation tasks models do best. Gains come from shrinking the job to its judgment tier, which raises the score per worker while reducing headcount.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,560 | $94,890 +13% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,080 | $96,260 +15% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 1,760 | $108,180 +29% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,250 | $104,000 +24% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,020 | $102,530 +22% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 700 | $80,690 -4% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 690 | $86,920 +4% |
| Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN | 500 | $88,040 +5% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 410 | $141,310 +68% |
| Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh, NY | 80 | $119,490 +42% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 420 | $112,950 +35% |
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 39. 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.