SAFE
Nearly all of the work is kneeling on a substrate cutting, buttering, and setting individual pieces to a flat plane in rooms that are never square, level, or the same twice — waterproofing a shower pan, planning layout so cuts land where they won't be seen, and matching veining across slabs. AI can already produce the estimate, the material takeoff, the layout diagram, and the customer quote, which is where the office side of a tile business gets squeezed. Robotic tile placement exists only in large flat commercial fields; residential remodels, curbless showers, stair nosings, and stone countertops remain hand skill, and homeowners hire the installer whose past bathrooms they can walk through.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $43,050 → $55,690 +3.5% 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
+10.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 35,850 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 +10.1% 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.
~4,200 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Tile ManInstallerTile MasonTile SetterMosaic LayerTile ErectorMarble SetterMarble WorkerMosaic WorkerTile FinisherTile MechanicTile InstallerBathroom FitterMarble FinisherFloor Tile LayerHard Tile SetterMarble InstallerGranite InstallerGranite FabricatorMastic Floor LayerMosaic Floor LayerTile Conduit LayerCeramic Tile SetterParquet Floor Layer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Setting a mud bed to slope on a curbless shower, back-buttering a 24x48 porcelain panel so it doesn't lippage out, dry-fitting a diagonal on a room that's 3/8" out of square over 12 feet, and mitering a stone edge on a wet saw are sequential judgment-plus-hand tasks with no digital substitute — the only pieces machines have taken are estimating and layout drawings, which is why it sits at 18 and not 20.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You are on your knees on a hard substrate for six hours, hauling 50-lb boxes and mortar bags up stairs, running a wet saw in a room with no fixed dimensions, working around plumbing rough-ins, occupied houses, and half-finished framing — the only thing keeping it off 20 is that the site is at least indoors and enclosed most days.
Certification preferred, not legally required No national tile licence exists; most states pull you in under a general contractor or specialty-trade licence above a dollar threshold, and ANSI A108/TCNA methods and Schluter or Laticrete waterproofing certifications are what customers and warranty claims actually reference — real credentials, but voluntary ones, which is a 6 rather than a plumber's 15.
Meaningful discretion You decide where the layout line starts so the cut tile lands behind the toilet rather than at the door, whether the slab deflection needs an uncoupling membrane or a full mud bed, and whether the substrate is dry enough to set on — calls that cause a failed shower pan and a gut-out two years later, but they are made against published TCNA details rather than in a vacuum.
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 (6/20) 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 30 of this occupation's 67 points (45%).
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 78/100, still SAFE.
Continued growth of the referenceable-portfolio model — homeowners paying a premium specifically for the installer whose prior bathrooms they walked through, reinforced if platforms (Angi, Houzz) or NTCA promote verified-craftsman badges tied to a named individual rather than a firm. Also rises if AI-generated renders make homeowners more skeptical of marketing imagery and more insistent on physical references.
Task-mix shift: as estimating, takeoff, layout diagrams and quoting move to software, the remaining day is disproportionately the calls that carry consequence — whether a substrate is flat enough to accept large-format panels, whether to float or self-level, where to place movement joints per TCNA EJ171, how to terminate waterproofing at a curbless threshold. The judgment tier becomes the whole job.
Same task-mix mechanism at the trade level: the office/pre-construction tier is what automates, and the residual is unpredictable-substrate handwork. Modest rise only, since task_resistance is already 18 and near ceiling.
Wider adoption of state/local code amendments requiring a certified installer's signed affidavit for shower waterproofing assemblies — e.g. jurisdictions adopting ANSI A118.10 pan-flood-test documentation as an inspected, signed item, or insurers requiring ICC/CTEF Certified Tile Installer credentials as a condition of leak-damage coverage. Some ceramic tile manufacturers already void warranties unless installation is by a CTEF-certified setter; if that becomes a code or insurer condition rather than a warranty term, a named human becomes personally on the hook.
The limit. task_resistance and embodiment are already near maximum; there is essentially no headroom there. The realistic movement is liability_shield, which is unusually low (6) for a trade where a failed shower pan causes five-figure water damage — a codified signed-installer requirement is the single largest available gain. Downward pressure to watch: shrinking crew sizes as the office side automates means fewer workers, not less-safe work.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,600 | $61,410 +10% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,170 | $58,600 +5% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,020 | $64,430 +16% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 990 | $63,540 +14% |
| Salt Lake City-Murray, UT | 970 | $49,990 -10% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 950 | $48,290 -13% |
| Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 940 | $54,850 -2% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 910 | $58,240 +5% |
| Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 30 | $88,730 +59% |
| Urban Honolulu, HI | 290 | $86,850 +56% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 450 | $79,040 +42% |
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.