Mechanical Engineers

Low Risk
32%

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Vote Comments (49)
AUTOMATION RISK
CALCULATED
30%
(Low Risk)
POLLING
33%
(Low Risk, Based on 2,615 votes)
Average: 32%
LABOR DEMAND
GROWTH
11.0%
by year 2033
WAGES
$99,510
or $47.84 per hour
Volume
281,290
as of 2023
SUMMARY
What does this snowflake show?
The Snowflake is a visual summary of the five badges: Automation Risk (calculated), Risk (polled), Growth, Wages and Volume. It gives you an instant snapshot of an occupations profile. The colour of the Snowflake relates to its size. The better the occupation scores in relation to others, the larger and greener the Snowflake becomes.
JOB SCORE
7.9/10
What's this?
Job Score (higher is better):

We rate jobs using four factors. These are:

- Chance of being automated
- Job growth
- Wages
- Volume of available positions

These are some key things to think about when job hunting.

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Calculated automation risk

30% (Low Risk)

Low Risk (21-40%): Jobs in this level have a limited risk of automation, as they demand a mix of technical and human-centric skills.

More information on what this score is, and how it is calculated is available here.

Some quite important qualities of the job are difficult to automate:

  • Originality

  • Persuasion

User poll

33% chance of full automation within the next two decades

Our visitors have voted there's a low chance this occupation will be automated. This assessment is further supported by the calculated automation risk level, which estimates 30% chance of automation.

What do you think the risk of automation is?

What is the likelihood that Mechanical Engineers will be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence within the next 20 years?

Sentiment

The following graph is shown where there are enough votes to produce meaningful data. It displays user poll results over time, providing a clear indication of sentiment trends.

Sentiment over time (quarterly)

Sentiment over time (yearly)

Growth

Very fast growth relative to other professions

The number of 'Mechanical Engineers' job openings is expected to rise 11.0% by 2033

Total employment, and estimated job openings

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the period between 2023 and 2033
Updated projections are due 09-2025.

Wages

Very high paid relative to other professions

In 2023, the median annual wage for 'Mechanical Engineers' was $99,510, or $48 per hour

'Mechanical Engineers' were paid 107.1% higher than the national median wage, which stood at $48,060

Wages over time

* Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

Volume

Greater range of job opportunities compared to other professions

As of 2023 there were 281,290 people employed as 'Mechanical Engineers' within the United States.

This represents around 0.19% of the employed workforce across the country

Put another way, around 1 in 539 people are employed as 'Mechanical Engineers'.

Job description

Perform engineering duties in planning and designing tools, engines, machines, and other mechanically functioning equipment. Oversee installation, operation, maintenance, and repair of equipment such as centralized heat, gas, water, and steam systems.

SOC Code: 17-2141.00

Comments (49)

Leave a comment
THOMAS TAN (No chance)
04 Oct 2025 03:31
Mechanical Engineers or Design engineers still require a human touch and creativity on design.
Matthew L (Low)
05 Jun 2025 13:54
As AI-aided machines replace human workers (e.g. Spot), they will need mechanical engineers to oversee them.
RP (Low)
08 Apr 2025 20:44
I'm a mech eng, and IAs can't actually do a lot of stuff we do.
Anirudh (Low)
19 Mar 2025 03:30
You need someone to make robots for robots to replace them.
b (Low)
21 Aug 2023 13:54
because we make the robot
Jacob (No chance)
04 Nov 2025 19:52
There is no way AI can implement complex solutions without human insight. AI can know about Structural Integrity, Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Differential Equations but it cannot meaningfully create necessary solutions because the algorithms aren’t designed to problem solve, they’re designed to give the most appropriate answer.
Zak Cullen (Low)
10 Jun 2025 23:57
depends a lot on real world decision making, value judgements/deciding what you believe is important to prioritise and management
Raúl (No chance)
02 Jul 2024 06:39
I think it has no chance because cars can have rust or other problems a robot can't understand and deal whit them.
Valentina C (Low)
25 Feb 2025 15:03
They prob wont take the job cs you need to see the machines, scan them to find the mistakes, and be reallly specialized on that area to find them, but its still very possible to do it. Im scared.
Congo (No chance)
16 Jun 2024 21:08
Simply in this area of engineering there is no chance of robot or AI taking it. Maybe in the long run yes, but there is still a pretty long way of developing AI to substitute a mechanical engineer, for now and 1 or 2 decades is impossible. Maybe in the third decade or fourth but with a lot of funding and a lot of training. Because you need to think that to be able to make an AI/robot that can surpass or substitute a human it will need to be only focused on this area, not pretty cost-effective, for the AI industries.
Burke (No chance)
13 Feb 2024 05:13
Mechanical Engineering, like all disciplines of engineering, requires the ability to make difficult ethical decisions regarding systems that affect all of society. This is something that not even the most advanced generalized AI of the future is capable of doing.

Engineering is also a profession, which means that its members set the standards for who can be called an engineer and take responsibility for their decisions. AI cannot make decisions in light of the weight of their actions. It is a tool, not a person, which ultimately undermines any semblance of accountability that is necessary for engineering to be a respectable and societally beneficial profession.
Michal (No chance)
09 Nov 2023 19:28
I believe mechanical engineering to be far too interdisciplinary (design, manufacturing, economics) to be fully automated a whole. I see AI taking over or speeding up certain specific tasks that mechanical engineers are burdened with, never their entire role.
Cyril (Moderate)
06 May 2023 06:35
As I said. It will certainly take over some tasks that are simple. So it reduce the need for so many ppl, but still the engineers are needed to decide what to do, or to revise AIs work
George Smiley (Moderate)
21 Feb 2023 11:53
Speaking from the point of view of a simulations engineer who build mathematical models using finite element analysis, I think automation will at first assist simulations engineers but will eventually replace them as it learns best practices for how to overcome convergence issues or nonsensical results.
Gavin
03 Jul 2024 01:08
I think ai will eventually replace parts of every profession but there are many there are things that just can’t be taught to something that cannot feel. It’s impossible to know what pain is if you’ve never experienced it. It’s impossible to understand the feelings of others if you have never felt. It’s impossible to know how to make someone’s life easier if you have no life.

Imagine you live your life in black and white from the moment you’re born to the time you’re 16. During this time you’re taught everything there is to know about color. You could talk about color for hours yet you still wouldn’t truly understand what color is until you actually see it. Now imagine that this is a friend of yours and you’re trying to explain the color yellow to them. You might tell them that yellow is a sunny day and energy or electricity, that it’s happiness or something else that you associate with the color yellow. Your friend will most likely not think of sunny days and electricity being similar in anyway and probably be very confused. Your friend represents ai and its ability to understand human wants, needs, and the way people live their lives. Making these three things easier to access or do are one of the main purposes of this job. Also there’s the whole ethical debate because it’s set to be as productive as it can, and eventually humanity gets in the way of that and it has to get rid of us
John (In college and worked in some factorys) (Low)
18 Nov 2024 15:36
I think some mechanical engineers will get replaced by the gain in efficiency that other engineers get form AI, a total AI/Robot taking of the job is not in the foreseeable future.
Arthur Schroeder (No chance)
12 Sep 2024 02:42
It’s a very hard job and very complicated and I don’t think robots are automating that any time soon…
Gavin (No chance)
02 Jul 2024 22:38
Artificial intelligence does not have the creativity needed or the ability to fully understand some of the problems people go through throughout the world.
John F. Sutton (Low)
23 Oct 2023 18:16
This is a sometimes tough job and would be hard to automate for good reason such as:

1. Fixing stuff, this is complicated as it could literally be anything that could be broken about something.
2. Complexity, the more complex a job is, the more unlikely this job will be taken, this job is hard and absurdly complex sometimes.
3. Problems, this job can cause lots of issues with AI and it is the communication and bugs/viruses that could occur, the cost of these robots would be nuts and it would be hard to afford these machines.
4. Design, AI is a complex work of coding, there is one problem, how would they make the design of there robots that won't screw up how they work, they have to be just right to mimic a person and that would be hard to do.
dhaarini (Uncertain)
10 Sep 2023 06:44
no trained machine has ever come too close to designing any whole equipment. but certainly, I feel there are specific jobs that could be automated like pressure, stress, strain detection and analysis
Sam (No chance)
03 Feb 2023 01:04
People that build and create won't be replaced by AI. Chat GPT said it itself that it simply doesn't have the creativity of a human.
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