EXPOSED
The work is disassembling carburetors, replacing pull cords and ignition coils, sharpening blades, and diagnosing a mower that won't start by feel, sound, and compression test — none of which a language model or current robot can do. AI's real reach here is the paperwork layer: work orders, parts lookup, estimate generation, and diagnostic reference that used to require a veteran's memory. The score sits mid-range not because the hands-on work is threatened but because there's no license protecting the trade and demand is tied to a consumer equipment market drifting toward sealed, cheap-to-replace battery units.
Headcount grew steadily across the period.
Median pay $36,100 → $47,880 +6.1% 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
+2.5% 36,900 → 37,800 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +2.5% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 57/100 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.
~3,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
MechanicShop MechanicEngine MechanicMobile MechanicGo-Cart MechanicJet Ski MechanicMagneto RepairerVehicle MechanicEngine SpecialistChain Saw MechanicGolf Cart MechanicPower Saw MechanicChainsaw TechnicianGas Engine MechanicGas Engine RepairerLawn Mower MechanicLawn Mower RepairerSnowblower MechanicSnowmobile MechanicGolf Course MechanicEdge Trimmer MechanicModel Engine MechanicSmall Engine MechanicGas Golf Cart Repairer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Pulling a flywheel to check a sheared key, cleaning a gummed two-stroke carb jet by jet, and re-tensioning a chainsaw clutch are irreducibly manual sequences on hundreds of non-standard chassis, which is why this sits at 17 rather than 13 — even the diagnostic step depends on hearing a lean surge and feeling compression on the recoil.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work over a bench and on the ground with the machine in whatever state the customer dropped it — caked grass, stale ethanol fuel, seized fasteners, sometimes on-site at a golf course or rental yard — and the only thing keeping this off a 20 is that most of the day is at a fixed bench rather than up a hillside.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no state license to be a small engine mechanic; EETC or manufacturer certification (Briggs, Kohler, Stihl gold) is a hiring preference and warranty-authorization requirement, not a legal gate, so nothing stops a shop owner or the customer's nephew from doing the same repair.
Meaningful discretion The consequential call is repair-versus-replace economics on a machine worth less than four hours of labor, plus deciding when a cracked block or scored cylinder means stop — genuine discretion, but bounded by service manuals, torque specs, and flat-rate times rather than open-ended ambiguity.
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 (2/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (10/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) 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 21 of this occupation's 57 points (37%).
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 75/100 — SAFE.
State right-to-repair statutes covering outdoor power equipment (Colorado HB24-1121 already covers agricultural equipment; Oregon and Minnesota electronics laws show the pattern) forcing OEMs to release parts, diagnostic tools and firmware unlocks to independent shops — which converts sealed battery units from throwaway into serviceable and restores independent shops as the buyer's chosen alternative to dealer-only service.
Task-mix shift as cheap consumer units become disposable: the surviving work is high-value commercial two-stroke, zero-turn hydrostatic drives, generators, and marine/powersports engines, where diagnosis is genuinely ambiguous and the routine carburetor-rebuild tier has left the shop with the throwaway mowers.
Battery/lithium-ion service creates a real certification hook: if NFPA/state fire codes or insurers begin requiring a certified technician to sign off on lithium battery pack repair or replacement in outdoor power equipment (mirroring EV high-voltage service credentialing and existing e-bike battery fire ordinances in New York City), a named-technician sign-off enters the trade for the first time.
Standby generator and emergency-power servicing under NFPA 110 load-bank testing requirements, where the technician's declaration that a unit will start under load carries consequences for hospitals, data centers and telecom sites.
Commercial landscaping fleet contracts (lawn crews, municipal parks) shifting to retainer maintenance agreements with a named technician and uptime guarantees, as opposed to walk-in consumer repair; the buyer is then paying for a relationship, not a transaction.
EPA Phase 3 small-engine emissions enforcement extended to require certified-shop documentation for carburetor/emissions component replacement, or CARB tamper rules applied at the repair-shop level rather than the manufacturer level.
The limit. The binding constraint is market volume, not capability: no lever here protects against the consumer segment migrating to sealed battery units that are cheaper to replace than to open. Licensing has never existed in this trade and no state board is currently proposing one, so liability_shield realistically stays in single digits.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 870 | $57,110 +19% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 820 | $47,780 +0% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 810 | $48,060 +0% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 810 | $47,880 +0% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 670 | $48,500 +1% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 660 | $51,680 +8% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 630 | $47,810 +0% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 610 | $51,970 +9% |
| New Haven, CT | 70 | $72,260 +51% |
| Rochester, MN | 50 | $61,920 +29% |
| Idaho Falls, ID | 30 | $61,360 +28% |
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 57. 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.