SAFE
The work is pulling hydraulic cylinders, rebuilding combine headers, chasing intermittent CAN bus faults, and welding cracked implement frames — often in a muddy field 40 miles from the shop during a harvest window that can't wait. AI already helps read diagnostic trouble codes, look up service literature, and draft repair estimates, but nothing automates torquing a final drive or diagnosing a wiring harness chewed by rodents. The absence of licensure is the only soft spot: the moat here is physical, not regulatory.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $42,200 → $56,550 +7.2% 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
+11% 39,000 → 43,300 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +11% 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.
~3,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
GreaserMechanicShop MechanicField MechanicDiesel MechanicCombine MechanicMachine MechanicTractor MechanicAssembly RepairerHarvester MechanicImplement MechanicMachinery MechanicPea Viner MechanicRice Dryer MechanicFarm Tractor MechanicFarm Machinery ErectorField Service MechanicFarm Equipment MechanicFarm Implement MechanicFarm Machinery MechanicDairy Equipment MechanicDairy Equipment RepairerFarm Equipment AssemblerFarm Machinery Assembler
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Splitting a tractor to reach the clutch pack, pressing in new bushings, and re-shimming a differential are irreducibly manual sequences where the only digitisable slice — pulling fault codes off the CAN bus and reading the service manual — is already a small fraction of billable hours, which is why this sits at 17 rather than the low teens where a diagnostic-heavy trade like automotive drivability work lands.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work lying under a combine in a stubble field, in dust and diesel, with a cutting torch and a 3/4-drive breaker bar, in weather nobody controls and positions no arm can be programmed for — there is no version of this job that happens at a screen, which is what 20 means.
Certification preferred, not legally required No state licenses farm equipment mechanics; your leverage is the dealer's certification path (John Deere Tech, CNH, AGCO) and EPA 609 for A/C work, which employers ask for but which creates no personal legal exposure that would keep a human in the loop — that's the difference between a 5 and the 12+ a licensed electrician gets.
Meaningful discretion Deciding whether to field-patch a hydrostat and get the machine through the next 200 acres or pull it in for a full teardown is a real judgment call with five-figure downtime consequences, and intermittent electrical faults require you to build a hypothesis with no procedure to follow — but flat-rate times, OEM service intervals, and warranty-claim rules constrain most of the day, so 13 rather than 16.
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 83/100, still SAFE.
EPA anti-tampering enforcement extended to require documented certified-technician sign-off on DEF/SCR and ECU reflash work, mirroring the heavy-truck emissions defeat-device crackdowns; personal exposure for the tech who deletes
Task-mix shift as remote telematics triage (Deere Expert Alerts, Connected Support) absorbs code-reading and parts pre-staging: the on-site remainder is the fix-or-limp-to-Friday call on a $700k combine mid-harvest, where a wrong call costs a crop
Independent shops marketing verified non-dealer, non-telematics-locked service as right-to-repair conflicts push growers toward technicians they personally trust with unlocked machine data — a named-tech relationship premium during harvest windows
Already near ceiling; only route is the same triage shift — routine code lookup and estimate drafting leaving the job, concentrating hours on intermittent harness/rodent/vibration faults and field fabrication that resist remote diagnosis entirely
Right-to-repair implementation rules (Colorado HB23-1011, the AFBF–John Deere MOU, and the pending state copycats) creating a manufacturer-authorized technician credential that must be on file for warranty-valid repairs to emissions/Tier 4 aftertreatment, ADAS-style autosteer, and safety interlocks — i.e., a named certified tech signs off before a machine returns to road/field service
Crop/equipment insurers or OEM extended warranty carriers requiring repairs on autonomous or semi-autonomous machines (Deere 8R autonomy, Case AFS) be performed and attested by a factory-certified technician for coverage to hold
The limit. embodiment is maxed at 20 and task_resistance is within 3 of ceiling, so realistic headroom is almost entirely institutional. Even a full authorized-technician regime is unlikely to reach medical/engineering-grade personal liability, since the customer is a business buying uptime, not a regulated third party; a realistic ceiling is high-70s to low-80s.
| Fresno, CA | 530 | $48,760 -14% |
| Visalia, CA | 440 | $47,320 -16% |
| Salinas, CA | 410 | $47,400 -16% |
| Bakersfield-Delano, CA | 400 | $47,210 -17% |
| Kansas City, MO-KS | 400 | $50,290 -11% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 360 | $63,900 +13% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 360 | $59,290 +5% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 340 | $63,760 +13% |
| Vallejo, CA | 40 | $78,830 +39% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 140 | $75,900 +34% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 140 | $74,210 +31% |
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.