SAFE
The work is diagnosing and fixing overhead, automatic, and revolving doors in situ — replacing torsion springs, aligning tracks, adjusting sensors and closers, rewiring operators, and cutting and hanging hardware in buildings that are never built the same way twice. None of that is text or screen work, and today's robotics cannot get a 200-pound sectional door off a bent track in a cramped commercial vestibule. AI compresses the paperwork around the job — quoting, scheduling, parts lookup, service write-ups — not the job itself.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $41,570 → $55,720 +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
+11.4% 28,400 → 31,700 on the projections basis
Hard to automate, and growing
The work resists current AI and the BLS projects +11.4% 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.
~2,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
RepairmanDoor InstallerDoor RepairmanService PersonDock TechnicianDoor ServicemanDoor TechnicianService TechnicianCommercial InstallerDoor Closer MechanicCommercial TechnicianGarage Door InstallerResidential InstallerGarage Door TechnicianAutomatic Door MechanicExterior Door InstallerInstallation TechnicianOverhead Door InstallerMechanical Door RepairerOverhead Door TechnicianAutomatic Door TechnicianCommercial Door InstallerResidential Door InstallerGarage Door Opener Installer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Winding a torsion spring to the right turns on a door whose original hardware nobody documented, then shimming a jamb that settled three inches out of plumb, is trial-and-adjust physical judgment with no digitizable intermediate — the only tasks a model touches are the parts lookup and the invoice, which is why this lands at 17 and not a full 20.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments Ladders, cramped vestibules, live 120V operators, overhead loads under lethal spring tension, freezing loading docks and active traffic doorways in occupied buildings — 19 reflects that every billable minute happens at the door itself, in a space configured by someone else decades ago.
Certification preferred, not legally required There is no door-technician licence in most states; you may hold an electrical or low-voltage card, IDA/AAADM certification for automatic pedestrian doors, and you sign the annual AAADM inspection label — real paperwork, but the building owner and GC carry the exposure, which caps this at 7 rather than the 12+ an electrician's licence would earn.
Meaningful discretion Deciding whether a fire-rated rolling door needs a drop test or full replacement, whether a cracked cable and worn drum means shut the bay down now, and calling a sensor a life-safety failure on a door thousands of people walk through daily is genuine discretion — but ANSI/DASMA and AAADM procedures and manufacturer specs frame most of those calls, holding this at 12.
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 (7/20) 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 (12/20) 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 84/100, still SAFE.
Insurer requirement: commercial general-liability carriers conditioning coverage for automatic-entrance premises injury claims on documented annual inspection by a named certified technician — already common practice for elevators and fire doors (NFPA 80 requires annual fire-door inspection by a 'qualified person' with a written record). Extension of an NFPA-80-style qualified-person record requirement to all powered pedestrian doors would attach named-human accountability to routine service.
Modest route only: torsion-spring injuries and entrapment lawsuits sustain buyer preference for a named, insured, certified technician over an app-dispatched gig installer. IDA (International Door Association) certification marketing and manufacturer authorized-dealer programs are the visible mechanism. No route to a large premium — buyers mostly price-shop.
State/municipal adoption of mandatory certification for automatic door inspection and repair — e.g. AAADM (American Association of Automatic Door Manufacturers) annual safety inspection already requires a certified inspector's signed sticker, and ANSI/BHMA A156.10/A156.19 compliance is increasingly written into building codes. If a state (Ohio and Washington have floated door-safety licensure after pedestrian entrapment injuries) makes the AAADM certificate a legal precondition for the annual inspection sign-off, with personal liability attaching to the signer, this rises materially.
If code or carrier rules make the technician the person who decides whether a door stays in service — authority to red-tag and lock out an entrance that fails sensor or force testing, as elevator inspectors can — the role owns a consequential, contested call against a building owner who wants the door open.
Task-mix shift as low-end work leaves: residential garage-door spring-and-opener swaps are commoditizing toward install-only crews and DIY kits, while the remaining commercial tier is retrofit integration — tying door operators into access control, fire alarm interfaces, and ADA force compliance in buildings with no as-built drawings. Genuine two-tier occupation; if the residential tier is absorbed by lower-skill labor, the surviving job is the diagnostic tier.
The limit. Already 67 with embodiment near max; the realistic headroom is almost entirely in liability/accountability via door-safety code and insurer inspection regimes. Capability dimensions cannot rise much further and will not fall soon either — the binding risk to this occupation is not AI but door designs with fewer serviceable parts and manufacturer-locked diagnostics that route work to authorized dealers, shrinking the independent trade without automating it.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,770 | $66,890 +20% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 1,260 | $54,330 -2% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 770 | $60,780 +9% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 740 | $50,850 -9% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 540 | $58,330 +5% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 500 | $40,880 -27% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 490 | $58,110 +4% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 480 | $56,480 +1% |
| Trenton-Princeton, NJ | 70 | $67,090 +20% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,770 | $66,890 +20% |
| South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI | 50 | $64,640 +16% |
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.