Automotive body and related repairers

SOC 49-3021 · 49-0000 · Score reference month August 2026

Repair and refinish automotive vehicle bodies and straighten vehicle frames.

In short

The national Job Market Health score is in the Balanced band for August 2026.

Job Market Health score

55/ 100
Balanced

Stable

Confidence
High
Restated score
55
Methodology
v1.0
Geography
US
  • At least 90% of required inputs and occupation-industry mapping are covered.

Job Market Health scores are derived indicators based on published data, informational only, not a forecast or guarantee.

$54,890Median annual wageOEWS May 2025
12,600Projected annual openingsBLS Employment Projections 2025-2035
+3.7%Projected growth2025–2035
149,310Total employmentOEWS May 2025

Latest interpretation

What stands out for automotive body and related repairers

The clearest signals from the latest validated score, outlook and metro data.

The score components are relatively close

The strongest component is current demand at 56/100, while long-term outlook is 52/100. The 4-point spread is comparatively narrow.

JobMarketHealth score components

Published long-term outlook

BLS projects 12,600 average annual openings and +3.7% employment growth from 2025 to 2035. Projected openings are a modeled annual average, not vacancies open today.

BLS Employment Projections

Largest published metro market

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has the largest published metro employment count for automotive body and related repairers, at 8,150 jobs. The next-largest published metro is Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN with 4,450 jobs. This measures employment scale, not market quality.

BLS OEWS

Local market context

QCEW industry conditions for this occupation’s employment mix

Choose a state to see how the industries that employ this occupation are performing locally.

Choose a state above to explore its available industry context.

How to read this section

QCEW measures employment and wages by industry, not by occupation. We weight those industry conditions using the published industry mix for this occupation. These figures describe the industries that employ this occupation; they are not direct counts of people working in the occupation or jobs currently open.

Source: BLS QCEW. This section is not part of the national 0 to 100 Job Market Health score. See the methodology.

Compare states for automotive body and related repairersSide-by-side published industry conditions for two or three states. There is no state-level health score; the 0 to 100 score is national.

How to read this page

The score is a national composite from 0 to 100 that weights near term hiring demand at 50 percent, the occupation's own employment fundamentals at 30 percent, and long-term outlook at 20 percent. Wages and occupation profile details are context shown alongside it, not score inputs. See the full methodology.

Median annual wage and metro employment come from BLS OEWS, which is annual. Projected annual openings and projected growth come from BLS Employment Projections and describe the published projection horizon, so they are not a count of jobs open today. Values shown as not published are suppressed by the source rather than filled in here.

Job Market Health trend

Published composite score · 0–100 · by reference month

Latest published values
  • Aug 2655 / 100
View values: Job Market Health history
Job Market Health history
Reference monthScore / 100
Jan 2555
Feb 2554
Mar 2557
Apr 2554
May 2552
Jun 2544
Jul 2544
Aug 2544
Sep 2545
Oct 2546
Nov 2545
Dec 2546
Jan 2648
Feb 2651
Mar 2653
Apr 2655
May 2654
Jun 2655
Jul 2655
Aug 2655

Score components

The three published inputs behind the composite · each 0–100

Current demand56 / 100
Occupation fundamentals54 / 100
Long-term outlook52 / 100

Largest metro markets by employment

OEWS employment count, where the jobs are, not a quality ranking

OEWS May 2025. These occupation counts describe the survey reference period.

Linked metro names open overall job-market profiles.

Compare cities for this career →

Employment · number of jobs

  • New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ8,150
  • Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN4,450
  • Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA4,270
  • Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX4,080
  • Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX3,410
  • Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA2,690
  • San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA2,680
  • Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD2,660
  • Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL2,430
  • Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH2,230
Largest metro markets by employment
Metro areaEmploymentJobs per 1,000Median annual wage
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ8,1500.86$57,920
Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN4,4500.99$52,040
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA4,2700.68$67,090
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX4,0801.01$57,280
Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX3,4101.04$56,060
Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA2,6900.93$55,690
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA2,6801.13$76,740
Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD2,6600.92$59,000
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL2,4300.86$51,680
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH2,2300.82$59,630

Education & training

Typical entry requirements · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035

Typical education
High school diploma or equivalent
Work experience
None
On-the-job training
Long-term on-the-job training
Projected employment
169,300 jobs

Top skills

Occupation profile · O*NET 31.0 Database

  • Repairing
  • Troubleshooting
  • Active Listening
  • Critical Thinking
  • Monitoring
  • Operations Monitoring
  • Quality Control Analysis
  • Speaking
  • Time Management
  • Active Learning

Also known as: Auto Body Man, Auto Body Repair Technician (Auto Body Repair Tech), Auto Body Repairman, Automotive Body Technician (Auto Body Tech), Body Man, Body Technician (Body Tech)

AI & this occupation

How AI relates to Automotive body and related repairers work

Across 4 research exposure measures, Automotive body and related repairers is in the lower technical AI exposure band based on the mean of the available source-specific percentile ranks. Exposure describes how much of the work the studied AI capabilities could technically assist with; it is not a forecast of job loss.

The saved Anthropic task-exposure benchmark records a zero index for this occupation. This is not proof of no AI use; the observation window is not recorded in this saved release.

JobMarketHealth has not measured an AI effect on this occupation's employment or wages, and these figures do not enter its scores; there is no clear evidence of displacement in the data shown here.

Technical AI exposureLower exposureMean of 4 available source-specific percentile ranks (4 measures checked); fixed exposure bands, not a national rank of the composite
Dated Claude task exposureLower thirdObserved task-exposure benchmark 0.000; observation window not recorded
Business AI use (BTOS Core)24.6%U.S. businesses using AI, two weeks ending 2026-10-04; all industries, not this occupation
Historical task mix (2025)Not enough tasksFewer than 3 observed tasks
Measured labor-market effectNot estimatedJobMarketHealth does not attribute employment or wage changes to AI

Exposure measures (kept separate)

  • GPTs are GPTs exposure (β, GPT-4 rated): 0.04 of 1, national percentile 11 (lower third)
  • Microsoft AI applicability: 0.09 of 1, national percentile 29 (lower third)
  • AIOE (Felten, Raj & Seamans): -1.18 (standardized), national percentile 13 (lower third)
  • OECD AI Capability Gap (lower gap = higher potential exposure): gap 3.3 of 23, national percentile 48 (middle third)
OECD capability gap by domain

As published by the OECD: the gap between what the occupation demands (0-5) and current AI capability in each domain. A lower gap means AI is closer to the requirement (higher potential exposure); 0 means AI already meets it or the domain is not relevant.

  • Language: gap 0.00 (demand 2.45 of 5)
  • Social interaction: gap 0.05 (demand 2.05 of 5)
  • Problem solving: gap 0.70 (demand 2.70 of 5)
  • Creativity: gap 0.00 (demand 2.00 of 5)
  • Metacognition & critical thinking: gap 0.60 (demand 2.60 of 5)
  • Knowledge, learning & memory: gap 0.30 (demand 3.30 of 5)
  • Vision: gap 1.00 (demand 4.00 of 5)
  • Manipulation: gap 2.00 (demand 4.00 of 5)
  • Robotic intelligence: gap 1.30 (demand 3.30 of 5)

National context: what businesses used generative AI for

From the Census 2025-26 BTOS AI Supplement (all industries; businesses whose employees used generative AI). Census did not measure Automotive body and related repairers specifically.

  • Writing or editing documents, emails, or communications: 85.4%
  • Searching for information or technical help: 49.9%
  • Interpreting, analyzing, translating, or summarizing documents: 44.6%
  • Information processing, paperwork, or filing: 34.7%

Exposure and observed usage are separate measures and neither equals job loss. Census BTOS figures are business-level surveys and are not occupation-specific. Sources: GPTs are GPTs occupation exposure; Microsoft Working with AI: AI applicability; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE); OECD AI Exposure Measure (AI Capability Gap); Anthropic Economic Index; Census BTOS Core AI Use; Census BTOS AI Supplement 2025-26. These figures do not affect Job Market Health scores. Explore AI & Jobs · How we use AI data.

Sources and methodology

The datasets behind the figures on this page

Job Market Health score
Score for reference month August 2026 · methodology v1.0 · MethodologyScore last recalculated Oct 2, 2026 · First published Sep 29, 2026
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
Employment, wages and largest metros · OEWS May 2025 · publisher release May 15, 2026 · About this sourceRetrieved Sep 17, 2026
BLS Employment Projections
Projected growth, openings, education and training · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035 · publisher release Aug 27, 2026 · About this sourceRetrieved Sep 17, 2026
O*NET
Skills, alternate titles and related occupations · O*NET 31.0 Database · publisher release date not verified · About this sourceRetrieved Oct 19, 2026

Values marked “Not published” are suppressed or not published by the source. We leave them blank rather than estimating them. Pipeline status for every source is on Data Status.

Evidence record

JobMarketHealth derived indicator; not a government statistic. The composite score is national and occupation level.

Occupation
Automotive body and related repairers
SOC code
49-3021
Geography
United States
Reference month
August 2026
Published Job Market Health score
55 / 100
Restated score
55 / 100
Band
Balanced
Current Demand component
56 / 10050% weight
Occupation Fundamentals component
54 / 10030% weight
Long-Term Outlook component
52 / 10020% weight
Confidence
HighAt least 90% of required inputs and occupation-industry mapping are covered.
Methodology version
v1.0
Source vintage: Annual
EP-2025-2035|CPS-25b-2025|OEWS-2020-2025
Source vintage: Monthly calculated at
2026-10-02T15:32:42.508Z
First published at
Sep 29, 2026
Recalculated at
Oct 2, 2026
Canonical record URL
https://jobmarkethealth.com/occupations/automotive-body-and-related-repairers#evidence-record
Derived by
JobMarketHealth

Keep going

Learn how to judge a market from these numbers in how to tell if a job market is healthy, or why projected growth and annual openings often disagree in projected growth vs projected annual openings. Coverage, revisions and limits are explained on about the data.

The datasets behind these figures, and what each one can and cannot show, are set out on data sources.