SAFE
The job is pulling the back off a 9-year-old front-loader in a cramped laundry closet, reading error codes, testing a control board with a multimeter, and swapping a drain pump — none of which language models touch. AI will absorb the diagnostic-lookup layer (fault code interpretation, parts identification, scheduling, warranty paperwork), which is real but is a minority of billable time. The genuine threat to this occupation is economic, not algorithmic: cheap replacement appliances and sealed, non-serviceable designs shrink the repair market faster than any software does.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $40,260 → $50,990 +1.3% 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
+2.6%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 32,150 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +2.6% 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.
~3,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
HandymanRepair ManGas TechnicianRange MechanicStove MechanicStove InstallerVacuum RepairerAppliance WorkerAppliance AdvisorRepair TechnicianAppliance AdjusterAppliance MechanicAppliance RepairerAppliance InstallerRoom Cooler InstallerElectric Tool RepairerGas Appliance AdjusterGas Appliance MechanicGas Appliance RepairerGas Appliance ServicerMaintenance TechnicianElectric Razor MechanicElectric Stove MechanicGas Appliance Installer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Diagnosing why a Whirlpool dryer trips its thermal fuse means feeling for a blocked vent, checking belt tension by hand, and clearing lint from a blower housing — the only piece software can hand over is the fault-code table, which is why this sits at 17 rather than 20.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work inside someone else's kitchen: pulling a built-in oven out of cabinetry, tipping a fridge to reach the compressor, lying on a basement floor to chase a leaking water line, in spaces no two of which are laid out the same, which is as uncontrolled as an environment gets short of a rooftop or a live utility line.
Certification preferred, not legally required There is no appliance-repair licence in most states; the credentials that do bind you are narrow — EPA Section 608 for cutting into a sealed refrigerant system and a gas-appliance ticket in some jurisdictions for reconnecting a range — so parts of the job are legally fenced but the majority of calls anyone can legally take.
Meaningful discretion The real call is repair-versus-replace on a nine-year-old machine — quoting $480 in parts and labour against a $700 new unit — plus the condemnation judgment on a scorched control board or a cracked tub, decisions that are consequential to the customer's wallet but rarely involve life-safety ambiguity outside gas and refrigerant work.
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 (8/20) 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 (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 31 of this occupation's 67 points (46%).
Embodiment (19/20) 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 82/100, still SAFE.
Flammable-refrigerant conversion: as US manufacturers move refrigerators and heat-pump dryers to R-290/R-600a hydrocarbons and A2L blends under EPA's AIM Act HFC phasedown, servicing sealed systems falls under EPA Section 608 certification plus UL/state fire-code handling rules. If state boards or insurers require a 608-certified (and hydrocarbon-endorsed) tech to sign off on any sealed-system or gas-line reconnection, the signature becomes legally mandatory rather than customary.
If extended-warranty administrators and home-warranty insurers (Assurant, Asurion, AHS) keep pushing repair-vs-replace authority onto the field tech with a documented, auditable determination the insurer relies on to deny or pay a claim, the role owns a consequential financial call under ambiguity rather than executing one.
Task-mix shift: this job has two tiers. If AI absorbs fault-code lookup, parts ID, scheduling and warranty paperwork, the residual day is entirely in-closet teardown, intermittent-fault chasing on 9-year-old machines, and improvised fixes on discontinued parts — the tier no software touches. Already near ceiling, so headroom is small.
State licensing for gas appliance connection — several states/municipalities already require a licensed gas fitter to reconnect ranges and dryers. Extension of that requirement statewide, or insurer refusal to pay fire claims where an unlicensed person made the connection, pulls a legally-named liable human into a large share of jobs.
Right-to-repair implementation (Minnesota Digital Fair Repair Act, NY Digital Fair Repair Act, EU spare-parts ecodesign rules) forcing OEMs to release diagnostics and parts to independents. If manufacturers respond by formalizing authorized-service tiers that condition warranty validity on a named certified tech, buyers pay specifically for that credentialed human.
The limit. task_resistance and embodiment are already at 17/19 — near ceiling, so almost all headroom is institutional. The dominant risk is not scored here: sealed, non-serviceable designs and sub-$500 replacement appliances shrink the market regardless of how high these dimensions go. A shrinking safe occupation is still shrinking.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,560 | $65,190 +28% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 1,430 | $59,750 +17% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 960 | $61,150 +20% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 880 | $57,030 +12% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 870 | $49,350 -3% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 740 | $47,990 -6% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 530 | $61,870 +21% |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 500 | $58,240 +14% |
| Trenton-Princeton, NJ | 40 | $86,940 +71% |
| Barnstable Town, MA | 40 | $85,260 +67% |
| Racine-Mount Pleasant, WI | 60 | $81,740 +60% |
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.