EXPOSED
The visual front end of this job — mood boards, style concepts, photoreal renderings, palette and layout variations — is exactly what image models now produce in minutes, and CAD/space-planning drafts are increasingly generated too. What holds is the embodied middle: field measurement of crooked walls, touching and specifying materials, walking a job site, coordinating contractors and vendors, and absorbing a client's indecision until they commit. The modal worker here is residential or small-commercial; commercial designers with NCIDQ and code-compliance responsibility sit noticeably safer than that median.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $56,040 → $67,190 -4.1% 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%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 71,500 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +3.2% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 49/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
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.
~7,800 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
StylistDesignerDecoratorHome DesignerRoom DesignerHome DecoratorHouse DesignerKitchen DesignerProject DesignerDesign ConsultantInterior DesignerLighting DesignerFurniture ArrangerInterior DecoratorResidential DesignerDecorating ConsultantHome Lighting AdvisorKitchen Cabinet DesignerProject Interior DesignerCertified Kitchen DesignerInterior Design ConsultantKitchen and Batch DesignerInterior Design CoordinatorColor and Materials Designer
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Concept boards, palette studies, furniture layouts and photoreal renderings — the deliverables that fill most billable hours in a residential practice — are now produced by image and CAD generators in minutes, which pulls this well below the midpoint; what keeps it at 9 rather than 4 is that nothing generative can measure an out-of-square 1920s wall, verify a lead time with a mill, or reselect a stone after the client sees the actual slab.
Some physical or field component You are on site with a laser measure and a tape, pulling samples, checking that the installed tile matches the approved sample and that the sofa clears the stair turn — but you are not doing the demo or the install, and a large share of the week is spent at a screen on specs, schedules and purchase orders, which is why this lands mid-range rather than up with the trades.
Certification preferred, not legally required NCIDQ and state title or practice acts cover only part of the field — most residential designers work with no licence at all, and stamped drawings for anything structural or life-safety go out under an architect's or engineer's seal, so the personal exposure that would push this past 10 sits with someone else.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether to specify a $180/yd performance fabric for a household with dogs, whether that beam can be furred out or has to be exposed, and when to tell a client their idea will fail — real calls with real money attached, but the ones that carry code, egress or structural consequence get handed to the architect or GC, keeping this in the discretion band rather than the top.
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 (9/20 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 (6/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) 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 30 of this occupation's 49 points (61%).
Embodiment (10/20) 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.
Construction Managers 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 69/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: once rendering, palette variation, and CAD drafting are fully automated, the residual job is field verification of as-built conditions, material sourcing under lead-time constraints, and contractor coordination — a genuinely two-tier occupation where the surviving tier is procurement and site judgment, not visualization. Raises measured resistance without any new law, but shrinks headcount.
Expansion of state interior design practice acts (rather than title acts) requiring an NCIDQ-certified designer to seal commercial interior construction documents for permit — the model Louisiana/Nevada/Florida-style practice act, actively pushed by CIDQ and ASID/IIDA in state legislatures. If a state adopts sealing authority plus personal liability for egress, occupancy, and finish flame-spread compliance, the licensed tier gains a signature no model can supply.
Building-code adoption (IBC ch. 8/10 enforcement) or E&O insurers requiring a named human of record to certify AI-generated space plans and finish schedules before a permit or a bid package is accepted — mirroring how architects' insurers now exclude unreviewed generative output.
Growth of accessibility and healthcare/senior-living interiors work where the designer owns ADA clearance, wayfinding, and fall-risk calls that get audited after incidents — DOJ ADA settlements and CMS design guidance already create a named-decision-maker record.
Fee-structure shift toward hourly/retainer advisory and procurement-margin models where the client is explicitly buying taste attribution and a person accountable for a $200k furniture order — visible in high-end residential firms already declining flat-fee concept work.
Insurer or lender requirements for in-person as-built field measurement and material sign-off on renovation draws (already common in construction lending inspections) would harden the site-visit component against remote/AI substitution.
The limit. The residential median has no realistic route to a high trust premium: clients who once paid for concept boards can now generate them, and the brand-name taste premium concentrates in a small top tier. Practice-act expansion has been contested for two decades with slow, uneven adoption, and it protects only the commercial/NCIDQ segment — it does nothing for the modal residential worker, who is the majority of this SOC.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 5,460 | $76,580 +14% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 3,880 | $80,000 +19% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 3,090 | $60,860 -9% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 2,430 | $72,490 +8% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,420 | $65,160 -3% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,250 | $76,570 +14% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 1,840 | $79,590 +18% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,810 | $87,460 +30% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,810 | $87,460 +30% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 340 | $85,140 +27% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,290 | $81,480 +21% |
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 49. 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.