SAFE
The work is setting piers and blocking, leveling and shimming multi-section homes, bolting and sealing the marriage line, anchoring to tiedowns, and connecting water, sewer, gas and electrical crossovers — all done outdoors on uneven, muddy, variable sites that no current robot handles. AI can absorb the paperwork around the job (permit forms, HUD installation checklists, site drawings, scheduling, warranty claims), which is a real but small slice of the day. Most states license or certify manufactured home installers under HUD's federal installation standards, and the installer's signature is what closes out inspection.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $33,890 → $45,990 +8.6% 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
+5.9% 3,100 → 3,300 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +5.9% 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.
~300 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Crew MemberDelivery BuilderMobile InstallerSet Up TechnicianConcrete CraftsmanMobile Home LaborerMobile ProfessionalDelivery Crew MemberDelivery Crew WorkerMobile Home MechanicMobile Home ServicerCustom Home InstallerMobile Home InstallerMobile Homes RepairerHouse Trailer ServicerMobile Home TechnicianModular Set Crew MemberModular Home Crew MemberMobile Home Set-Up PersonWindow and Siding CraftsmanManufactured Buildings RepairerFabrication and Layout Craftsman
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: trust premium .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Crawling under a 16-by-76 box to shim a pier that's a quarter-inch low, torquing marriage-line lag bolts through misaligned rim joists, and dry-fitting a sewer crossover in a 30-inch crawl space are the day's core work — an 18 rather than 20 only because permit packets, HUD data plate paperwork, and set-crew scheduling are already moving to software.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Every task happens on an unprepared lot in whatever weather the delivery day brings — mud, frost heave, slope, tight setbacks, a toter backing a half-section into place — and a 19 reflects that even the measuring and leveling is done by hand with a transit or water level under the frame, not from a screen.
Licensed human required and personally liable Most states require a licensed or HUD-certified installer whose license number goes on the installation certificate, and a failed anchoring or leveling inspection traces back to that individual — it sits at 12 rather than 16 because the license is state-issued with reciprocity gaps, the manufacturer's setup manual dictates most of the method, and the retailer or GC often carries the bond.
Meaningful discretion Real calls get made on site — whether soil bearing supports the pier spacing in the manual, whether to add blocking under a marriage wall opening, whether to refuse a set on saturated ground — but the HUD Model Installation Standards and the manufacturer's manual prescribe pier heights, anchor spacing, and torque, which caps this at 10.
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 (18/20 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 (12/20) 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 (10/20) 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 68 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 80/100, still SAFE.
States adopting HUD's Model Installation Program more strictly — requiring the licensed installer of record to personally sign the installation certification and carry a surety bond/insurance covering leveling and anchoring failures (as Florida, Texas TDHCA and North Carolina already do). If more states move from 'certification' to bonded license-of-record with personal liability for post-storm anchor failures, this rises.
Retailer/manufacturer warranty programs that void the structural warranty unless installation is done by a manufacturer-trained, named crew (Clayton and Champion already condition warranties on approved installers). Buyers then pay specifically for the approved human crew.
As AI absorbs permits, HUD checklists, warranty claims and scheduling, the residual day is nearly all field judgment and hands-on setting — a task-mix shift, not a new rule. Ceiling effect limits the gain since the score is already 18.
Growth of the site-diagnosis half of the job — soil bearing capacity calls, frost-depth and pier design decisions on marginal lots, deciding whether a pad needs engineering. If HUD or state programs require the installer to document a soil/site determination rather than default to a generic pier plan, the consequential-call share of the role grows.
Post-hurricane insurer or FEMA requirement that anchoring and tiedown work be certified by a licensed installer or engineer before a policy is written or a disaster-replacement unit is occupied — an extension of Florida wind-mitigation inspection practice to installation sign-off.
The limit. task_resistance and embodiment are already near maximum; there is essentially no headroom there. The realistic movement is liability and the judgment tier. Trust premium is structurally capped — buyers of manufactured homes are price-sensitive and rarely choose a crew by name; the premium lives with the retailer, not the installer.
| Waco, TX | 50 | $43,220 -6% |
| Waco, TX | 50 | $43,220 -6% |
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 68. 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.