General maintenance workers
Official title Maintenance and Repair Workers, General (SOC 49-9071)
Also called Maintenance technician, Maintenance tech, Building maintenance, Building engineer, Facilities technician
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 1,529,700 US general maintenance workers, with median pay of $49,590 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2012, the highest was 1,531,700, in May 2024, close to the May 2025 count. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 300,000 from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for general maintenance workers: Predictive maintenance AI + IoT sensor networks, 2011 to 2020.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to grow 4.2% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 7.8% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
- 0.64 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013
Since the 2013 prediction
In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.64. BLS counted 1,249,080 of these jobs in May 2013 and 1,529,700 in May 2025 (+22%, a change derived by Future History).
Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). General maintenance workers: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/49-9071
Future History. "General maintenance workers: jobs and pay since 1900." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/49-9071.
@misc{futurehistory_49_9071, author = {{Future History}}, title = {General maintenance workers: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/49-9071}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }
The access date is today's date on your device.
≈ $48,319 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
The Equitable Life Assurance Society opens its new headquarters at 120 Broadway, New York: seven stories, approximately 130 feet tall, with Otis hydraulic passenger elevators. The building is not just the first US office building with elevators; it is the first commercial building complex enough to require a dedicated maintenance staff rather than a general custodian. About 400 people work inside. When the building is destroyed in a fire in 1912, six people die: a reminder of what building-systems failure means when life safety is involved.
Janitors and building workers in Chicago apartment buildings organize the Chicago Flat Janitor's Union: the first union of building-service employees in the United States, and the direct organizational ancestor of SEIU. The union's founding reflects the reality that building maintenance work had become a distinct occupational category with a sufficient workforce to sustain collective bargaining. William Quesse, the union's most important early leader, would go on to federate the movement into the Building Service Employees International Union in 1921.
William Quesse leads the merger of the Chicago Flat Janitor's Union and six other small janitors' locals to form the Building Service Employees International Union (BSEIU), chartered by the AFL on April 23, 1921. The founding members are immigrant janitors from Eastern Europe, Africa, Turkey, Spain, and Ireland: the demographics of who actually maintained American buildings at the time. The BSEIU grows from 200 members at founding to 250,000 by 1960, renamed the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in 1968.
December 29, 1970: President Nixon signs the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In the years before OSHA, an average of 38 American workers died each day on the job; 10% of the workforce experienced a work-related injury or illness annually. For maintenance workers specifically, OSHA's lockout/tagout standard (requiring that energy sources be isolated before working on equipment) and confined-space entry standard (requiring atmospheric testing, permits, and standby attendants for work in boiler rooms, utility tunnels, and crawl spaces) were the most consequential changes. OSHA raised the cost of the job and raised its professional expectations simultaneously.
Project Software & Development releases Maximo v1: the first computerized maintenance management system sold as a commercial product, running on an IBM PC. Before Maximo, maintenance record-keeping was paper: work orders in triplicate, parts inventories in ledger books, preventive maintenance schedules on a wall calendar. Maximo introduced the work order as a database object, linking asset history to labor hours, parts consumption, and failure codes. Within 15 years, CMMS adoption would become standard practice in commercial facilities management, and the maintenance worker's professional identity would include both the physical craft and the software record of it.
Frey & Osborne publish "The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?": the study that launches a decade of "robots are taking jobs" coverage. Their model assigns 49-9071 Maintenance and Repair Workers a computerization probability of approximately 0.22, placing them in the low-risk category. The bottleneck factors: high manual dexterity requirements, work in cramped or awkward positions, and "finger dexterity", tasks that, as of 2013, remained beyond robotic systems. A decade later, Boston Dynamics Spot robots can navigate some building environments, but cannot yet reliably diagnose and repair a failed HVAC compressor in a rooftop unit under field conditions. Frey & Osborne's low-risk prediction, unusual in its restraint for blue-collar work, has held.
BLS projects 159,800 average annual openings for general maintenance and repair workers 2024-2034: one of the highest annual-opening figures among installation, maintenance, and repair occupations. The replacement demand reflects a workforce aging toward retirement: the median age of maintenance workers is above the national median for all workers, and vocational enrollment in maintenance-related programs has declined. The occupation carries an O*NET "Bright Outlook" designation. The 2024 median annual wage of $48,620 is slightly below the 2000 median in real terms ($27,850 nominal, $50,733 in 2024 dollars).
Will AI replace general maintenance workers? What the research says
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.
What's changing day to day for general maintenance workers
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is sitting alongside you hereCreate, accept, update, and close CMMS work orders via mobile app, capturing asset ID, fault description, parts used, labor time, and any follow-up actions required
Create, accept, update, and close CMMS work orders via mobile app, capturing asset ID, fault description, parts used, labor time, and any follow-up actions required; attaching photos of the fault condition and completed repair; and adding notes that will help the next technician or the AI scheduling engine understand the repair history for that asset.[10],[4]
CMMS documentation quality is what separates a maintenance operation that has institutional memory from one that rediscovers the same failures every cycle. The technician who writes precise fault descriptions and photos assets becomes the invisible author of the building's repair history: a dataset that feeds AI scheduling, parts inventory, and eventually vendor performance reviews. In a competitive maintenance job market, demonstrable CMMS proficiency (UpKeep, MaintainX, IBM Maximo) is the most frequently cited differentiator in job postings per BOMA 2025.
AI is sitting alongside you hereSource and procure repair parts, identifying the correct part number from OEM documentation or equipment nameplates, comparing pricing and lead times across suppliers (Grainger, Fastenal, local HVAC supply houses), managing the maintenance storeroom inventory, and flagging AI-generated low-stock alerts in the CMMS inventory module to prevent stockouts on high-frequency consumables (belts, filters, light bulbs, ballasts).
Source and procure repair parts, identifying the correct part number from OEM documentation or equipment nameplates, comparing pricing and lead times across suppliers (Grainger, Fastenal, local HVAC supply houses), managing the maintenance storeroom inventory, and flagging AI-generated low-stock alerts in the CMMS inventory module to prevent stockouts on high-frequency consumables (belts, filters, light bulbs, ballasts).[11],[1]
AI inventory modules (Fiix, UpKeep) now auto-generate purchase orders when stock drops below reorder point, but the technician who maintains accurate part numbers, tracks substitutes for discontinued components, and builds supplier relationships that get a critical part delivered same-day is performing work the software cannot. Learn your equipment's OEM part-number documentation systems (Carrier, Trane, York, Weil-McLain) and maintain a parallel mental model of which local supply houses stock which parts for emergency situations.
AI is sitting alongside you hereEstimate repair costs for damage assessments, capital planning, and insurance claims, walking a property with a property manager or insurance adjuster, identifying scope of damage from water intrusion, storm damage, or equipment failure, and producing a written estimate that reflects current labor and materials costs in the local market.
Estimate repair costs for damage assessments, capital planning, and insurance claims, walking a property with a property manager or insurance adjuster, identifying scope of damage from water intrusion, storm damage, or equipment failure, and producing a written estimate that reflects current labor and materials costs in the local market.[1],[4]
Cost estimation is increasingly AI-assisted, CMMS platforms pull historical parts costs and labor times for similar repairs, but the technician's local market knowledge (which contractors are available, what current trade labor costs, which materials are backordered) is what makes the estimate credible. Building the ability to produce a written repair scope rapidly and defend it in a conversation with a property owner is one of the most transferable skills for a transition toward property management or construction management.
Where general maintenance workers go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- US median pay
- $69,990 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +3.7%
- Electricians
- US median pay
- $63,190 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +9.2%
- Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers
- US median pay
- $61,010 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +10.9%
- Industrial Machinery Mechanics
- US median pay
- $64,520 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +17.8%
What each move takes
Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
Experienced maintenance technicians are among the most credible candidates for property management roles because they understand what tenants actually experience, what repairs cost, and how building systems interact in ways that no classroom training replicates. Property managers who came up through maintenance command genuine respect from maintenance staff, vendors, and contractors: they cannot be easily misled about scope or cost. The technical-to-management pivot typically occurs after several years in maintenance and requires adding leasing fundamentals, resident relations skills, and property management software proficiency (Yardi, Buildium, AppFolio). The CRI delta reflects that property management has more administrative exposure to AI than physical maintenance, but the career ceiling and total compensation are substantially higher.
How has the work of general maintenance workers changed since 1870?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Hand tools + gas lighting era
The first building maintenance workers used the same hand tools as the trades they drew from: pipe wrenches, hammers, chisels, hand saws, and caulking irons. Lighting came from gas jets, and when they malfunctioned, the maintenance worker dealt with open flame in confined spaces. Boiler rooms ran on coal. Elevator machinery was hydraulic. Every repair was physical, every diagnosis was sensory, listening for a loose joint, feeling pipe temperature with bare hands, smelling a gas leak before it reached dangerous concentration. The craftsperson was the instrument.
Portable electric drill (Black & Decker, 1916)
Black & Decker invented the world's first portable electric drill in 1916, incorporating a pistol grip and trigger switch that allowed one-handed operation. Before this, drilling in the field meant a brace-and-bit or a trip back to a stationary machine. The portable drill brought power to the work site rather than moving work to the machine. Building maintenance workers were among the first commercial users: boring mounting holes for fixtures, drilling through structural members to run new pipe or conduit, cutting openings in walls.
Effect on the workThe portable drill increased drilling productivity versus hand brace for repetitive tasks.
Portable multimeter (AVO meter, 1923) + standardized power tools
Donald Macadie, a British Post Office engineer, invented the first multimeter in 1920, frustrated by carrying separate ammeters, voltmeters, and ohmmeters on telecom line work. The first commercial AVO (Amps-Volts-Ohms) meter went on sale in 1923. For building maintenance workers, this meant a single instrument for diagnosing electrical faults, measuring circuit continuity, checking voltage at outlets, testing motor windings. Black & Decker began marketing its electric drill to non-professionals in 1923, launching the consumer power-tools market. Together, the multimeter and portable power drill defined the maintenance technician's basic toolkit for the next decades.
Cordless tools (Black & Decker cordless drill, 1961) + fluorescent lighting era
In 1961, Black & Decker introduced the first cordless electric drill, developed in partnership with NASA for use in zero-gravity spacecraft assembly. The consumer cordless drill followed by the mid-1960s. For maintenance workers, cordless tools meant climbing ladders and scaffolding without trailing extension cords: a meaningful safety and productivity improvement. The widespread shift to fluorescent lighting in commercial buildings (beginning in the late 1930s but dominant by the 1960s) also transformed maintenance requirements: ballasts, starters, and fluorescent tubes replaced incandescent bulbs, adding an electrical-maintenance dimension to what had been a simple lamp-changing task.
OSHA compliance era: safety documentation and lockout/tagout
On December 29, 1970, President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act, creating OSHA and giving the federal government authority to set and enforce workplace safety standards. For maintenance workers, OSHA's most consequential early standards were: electrical safety (requiring lockout/tagout procedures before working on energized equipment), confined-space entry (requiring permits, atmospheric testing, and a standby attendant for work in boiler rooms, crawl spaces, and mechanical pits), and fall protection. Prior to OSHA, many US workers died each day on the job. The compliance burden was significant (adding documentation, training, and equipment requirements) but it also raised the professional standing of maintenance work by making clear what the job's actual hazards were.
CMMS: computerized maintenance management systems (Maximo, 1985)
The first commercial Computerized Maintenance Management System was Maximo, released in May 1985 by Project Software & Development (PSDI) as a turnkey file-based system on an IBM PC. Maximo introduced the concept of the work order as a digital object: a maintenance task with an asset ID, scheduled date, labor hours, parts consumed, and completion notes, all tracked in a database rather than on paper. For maintenance workers, CMMS changed the job in two ways: they now had a formal record of everything they had touched, and preventive maintenance schedules could be tracked systematically rather than relying on the worker's memory or a paper calendar. The software-side of maintenance work was born.
Effect on the workCMMS adoption in the late 1980s and 1990s reduced unplanned downtime in industrial settings by shifting reactive to preventive maintenance.
BACnet building automation standard (1995) + digital HVAC controls
BACnet (Building Automation and Control Network) was issued as ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135 in 1995, after eight years of development by a committee that had convened in Nashville in 1987 to solve a specific problem: hundreds of proprietary protocols in the building automation field that prevented equipment from different manufacturers from communicating. BACnet created a common language for HVAC controls, lighting systems, fire detection, and access control. For maintenance workers, this transformed HVAC troubleshooting from analog gauge-reading to digital fault-code diagnosis: the same shift that happened to auto mechanics in the 1990s with OBD-II. A worker who had learned to diagnose a pneumatic thermostat now had to read a control-panel touchscreen and interpret fault codes from a building management system.
Predictive maintenance AI (Augury, 2011) + IoT sensor networks
Augury was founded in 2011 by Saar Yoskovitz and Gal Shaul, after Shaul identified a failing machine at a medical device company by its sound alone: a fan that simply needed cleaning. Augury's technology digitizes that intuitive diagnostic: vibration and ultrasound sensors mounted on motors, compressors, and pumps feed data to cloud AI that models each machine's "health signature" and predicts failures days or weeks ahead. IBM Maximo, acquired by IBM in 2006, added AI-driven failure prediction on top of its CMMS work-order backbone. For maintenance workers, the practical effect is a shift in how they spend time: less reactive emergency response, more scheduled intervention triggered by sensor alerts. The work itself, the physical act of replacing a bearing or resealing a pump, does not change.
Effect on the workAugury reported an internal target of making every plant persona 30% more productive: the augmentation model, not displacement. A 2019 Nanalyze survey of predictive maintenance deployments found reductions in unplanned downtime, with maintenance headcounts largely stable.
AI-augmented diagnostics + smart building platforms
The 2020s brought the integration layer: building management systems, IoT sensors, mobile work-order apps, and AI diagnostics unified into platforms that a technician operates from a tablet. Microsoft Smart Buildings, Siemens Desigo, and Johnson Controls Metasys combined BACnet-era sensor networks with cloud dashboards and, after 2023, LLM-powered troubleshooting assistants. A maintenance worker checking a fault code on a rooftop HVAC unit can now query an AI system for likely causes and recommended steps. What the AI cannot do: go up to the roof, remove the panel, identify whether the refrigerant lines are fouled or the compressor is mechanically failing, and execute the repair. The physical diagnostic under constraint, hands in the machine, remains the irreducible human contribution.
Effect on the workBLS projects employment growth 2024-2034 despite widespread AI tool adoption. The augmentation thesis holds empirically: smart-building AI has increased per-technician scope without reducing technician headcount in major commercial portfolios.
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Browse all rolesMaintenance and Repair Workers, General employment and pay by year
In other countries
The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.
Canada (NOC 73201)
- Employment, 2020
- 98,405, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 73201 General building maintenance workers and building superintendents, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
- Median pay, 2020
- C$52,400, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 73201 General building maintenance workers and building superintendents, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Australia (ANZSCO 8993)
- Employment, 2025
- 43,300, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 8993 Handypersons, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
- Median pay, 2025
- A$79,976, ABS Employee Earnings May 2025 Official statistic Report an errorAnnualised (x52) from A$1,538 median weekly earnings. ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025: median pay for full-time non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate, before tax. Surfaced via the Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile.
View all 21 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 300,000 | n/a | Est., IPUMS USA Researched context | Report |
| 1921 | 400,000 | n/a | Est., SEIU Researched context | Report |
| 1950 | 700,000 | n/a | Est., IPUMS USA Researched context | Report |
| 1980 | 1,100,000 | $14,500 | Est., DOL / OSHA Researched context | Report |
| 2000 | 1,216,250 | $27,850 | BLS OEWS 2000 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 1,217,820 | $34,730 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 1,225,450 | $35,030 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 1,230,270 | $35,210 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 1,249,080 | $35,640 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | 1,282,920 | $36,170 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 1,314,560 | $36,630 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 1,332,480 | $36,940 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 1,351,210 | $37,670 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 1,384,240 | $38,300 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 1,418,990 | $39,080 | BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 1,357,630 | $40,850 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 1,416,740 | $43,180 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 1,485,990 | $44,980 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 1,503,150 | $46,700 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 1,531,700 | $48,620 | BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 1,529,700 | $49,590 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |
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