Upholsterer
Automation evidence for this trade is genuinely thin, and it's worth saying so plainly rather than padding it out.
We have not ingested real-world usage data for this occupation yet. We show a band only where genuine data exists, rather than estimate one.
What a upholsterer actually does
Upholsterers rebuild and recover furniture — chairs, sofas, car seats, headboards — by stripping old fabric and padding down to the bare frame, then reconstructing it piece by piece. The work starts with examining the frame itself for structural defects, cracked joints, or broken springs that need repair before any new material goes on.
Upholsterers measure and cut new covering material using patterns taken directly off the old cover or drafted fresh for an odd-shaped piece, then build up new cushioning from fiber, cotton, felt, or foam to match the original feel and silhouette. Fitting and securing that material — stretching it evenly over curves, pleating corners so they lie flat, tacking or stapling it drum-tight without puckering — is manual, tactile work done by feel, since no two frames or fabrics behave identically.
Many upholsterers also do sewing repairs on covers, replace webbing and springs, and consult directly with customers on fabric choice, color, and cost before starting a job — a customer-facing, judgment-heavy trade built around one-off pieces rather than a repeatable production line.
Why it reads this way
Automation evidence for this trade is genuinely thin, and it's worth saying so plainly rather than padding it out. The one company found doing anything AI- or robotics-adjacent, Kathedra (founded 2024), has a single pilot contract — a $235,000 deal with furniture maker Vanguard Furniture — automating exactly one narrow task: stapling fasteners onto chair frames, and the founder frames it explicitly as addressing repetitive-strain injury risk for workers, not replacing skilled labor.
That's a single customer, a single sub-task, at pilot scale — nowhere close to commercial, fleet-wide deployment. No robotic system was found doing full reupholstery work: matching a pattern to an existing curved frame, hand-tacking pleats around a corner, or judging how a new fabric will stretch and wear.
Licensing is a real, if partial, protection here too — California's Bureau of Household Goods and Services requires a state license specifically for custom upholsterers who repair or reupholster furniture, and at least several other states impose some form of occupational licensing fee on the trade.
Skills this role draws on
We don't yet have task-by-task time-share data for this occupation, so we can't show which specific tasks carry the exposure score above. This is the real skill set instead.
Typical salary range (USD)
$31,690–$63,770
Average: $46,340/yr
Range source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Upholsterers (51-6093.00), 2025 release
Average source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Upholsterers (51-6093.00), 2025 release, accessed via O*NET OnLine / My Next Move — direct bls.gov access returned HTTP 403 during research
Related careers
Head-to-head comparisons
Upholsterer scores 88/100 (Safe band). The only AI/robotics-adjacent effort found in this trade, Kathedra, is a single 2024 pilot contract worth $235,000 with furniture maker Vanguard Furniture, automating one narrow sub-task — stapling fasteners onto chair frames — explicitly to reduce repetitive-strain injury, not to replace skilled labor. No robotic system automates full reupholstery: pattern-matching to a worn frame, hand-tacking pleats, or judging how new fabric will stretch and wear. California and several other states require an occupational license for custom upholsterers, adding a partial legal barrier most trades in this batch lack.
This is a researched judgment (checklist v1.2), not a statistical measurement — it sits alongside, not instead of, the structural exposure signal above. Next scheduled review: 2027-02-11.
Data sources & methodology
Salary data: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Upholsterers (51-6093.00), 2025 release. Min/max figures represent the 10th–90th percentile annual wage range across the United States. Average figure sourced separately: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Upholsterers (51-6093.00), 2025 release, accessed via O*NET OnLine / My Next Move — direct bls.gov access returned HTTP 403 during research.
Automation Risk Score: Based on O*NET occupational analysis (51-6093.00) evaluating task complexity, physical requirements, social intelligence, and environmental variability. Methodology based on research from Frey & Osborne (Oxford, 2017).
Growth projections: -1% or lower (2024-2034), based on BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook.