EXPOSED
The core of this job — pulling door panels and dashboards, running wire looms through firewalls, fabricating amp racks and speaker baffles, splicing into vehicle harnesses, and chasing ground loops and alternator whine in a specific car — is manual work in a cramped, non-standard physical space that no robot performs. What AI erodes is the surrounding layer: wiring-diagram lookup, system design and load calculations, quoting, and troubleshooting scripts that used to take experience to accumulate. There is no license and no signature requirement, so the moat is purely physical skill and the shop's reputation, not regulation.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $37,380 → $48,420 +3.6% 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
-13.6%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 8,550 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Shrinking, but not obviously because of AI
The BLS projects -13.6% by 2034, but at 51/100 this work is only moderately exposed — not the profile of a job current AI can simply do. Occupations shrink for many reasons, and the score does not point at automation as this one's cause.
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.
~600 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
WirerInstallerGenerator ManGenerator WorkerAccessory InstallerAppliance InstallerAuto Radio MechanicCar Alarm InstallerCar Audio InstallerEquipment InstallerGenerator RebuilderTape Deck InstallerAuto Phone InstallerCar Stereo InstallerAutomotive TechnicianCustom Home InstallerElectronic TechnicianElectronics InstallerBurglar Alarm InstallerInstallation SpecialistInstallation TechnicianElectrical Tryout PersonCar Electronics InstallerSecurity System Installer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Fishing a wire loom behind a 2019 Ram's A-pillar, cutting a baffle to fit a door that was never designed for a 6x9, and pinning a T-harness into a factory connector without breaking the retaining tab are tasks defined by the specific vehicle in front of you, which keeps this at 15 rather than 18 — the diagnostic reasoning around them (which wire is the reverse trigger, why the head unit resets on cranking) is increasingly answered by a model reading the same service data you would.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work upside down in a footwell with a trim tool in your teeth, on someone else's vehicle, in a bay with variable lighting and no fixed workpiece geometry — 17 rather than 20 only because the car is at least stationary and indoors, unlike a lineman or a roofer.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licenses 12-volt installers; the 3 reflects that MECP certification is a resume line customers rarely ask about, and when an aftermarket remote start bricks a BCM the argument is with the shop's warranty and the vehicle manufacturer, not with a board that can pull your ticket.
Meaningful discretion Deciding to run a second ground to the chassis instead of daisy-chaining, or refusing to tap a CAN-bus circuit on a late-model that will throw codes, is discretion with real money behind it, but it sits at 8 because most calls are bounded by the install manual, the amp's current draw, and what the customer already paid for.
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 (15/20 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 (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (8/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (8/20) 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 19 of this occupation's 51 points (37%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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.
Medical Equipment Repairers EXPOSED
Motorcycle Mechanics SAFE
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 68/100 — SAFE.
As CAN-bus and gateway architectures make any splice a potential source of intermittent faults in braking or driver-monitoring systems, the consequential call becomes 'will this install compromise a safety network' — an ambiguity call the shop owns and can be sued over, rather than a wiring task. Visible now in OEM aftermarket-modification voiding language and in insurers denying claims on modified vehicles
EV high-voltage work: if state occupational rules or insurer conditions require documented HV-qualified personnel (NFPA 70E-style / OEM HV disable-and-verify procedures) for any work behind the HV interlock, installers cutting into EV harnesses need a credentialed sign-off
Genuine two-tier split: if AI absorbs diagram lookup, load calc, quoting, and scripted diagnosis, the residual job is undocumented-fault work — chasing intermittent ground loops, gateway rejection of aftermarket modules, and vehicles whose harness has been previously butchered, where no diagram exists to consult
ADAS recalibration and safety-system integrity: if state inspection or insurer repair-standard rules (following the pattern of Washington's and Minnesota's OEM-repair-procedure statutes, and I-CAR/OEM position statements requiring documented static/dynamic recalibration after windshield, camera, or radar disturbance) require a named, certified technician to sign a recalibration and pre-scan/post-scan record before a vehicle with ADAS is returned to service, aftermarket electronics work that touches cameras, radar sensors, or CAN bus falls under a signed attestation regime
Narrow route only: high-end and classic/restoration audio and 12-volt work where buyers pay for a named fabricator's craftsmanship (SEMA/MECA competition circuit, restomod builders). Does not extend to the volume remote-start and backup-camera trade
The limit. Realistic ceiling is low-to-mid 60s. There is no path to a general license for 12-volt installers; the credible gains all come from ADAS/EV safety-system adjacency, which raises the score for technicians who move into that work and leaves the plain audio-and-alarm installer where they are. Trust premium stays thin because most demand is price-shopped through dealers and big-box installers.
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 390 | $52,180 +8% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 370 | $54,930 +13% |
| Elkhart-Goshen, IN | 260 | $58,890 +22% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 230 | $49,850 +3% |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 210 | $49,740 +3% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 200 | $44,110 -9% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 150 | $46,400 -4% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 150 | $57,310 +18% |
| Urban Honolulu, HI | 60 | $68,480 +41% |
| Louisville/Jefferson County, KY-IN | 40 | $60,900 +26% |
| Salem, OR | 60 | $59,970 +24% |
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 51. 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.