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Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters

Also called Cabinetmaker, Bench carpenter, Cabinet builder, Custom cabinet maker, Furniture builder

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 77,170 US cabinetmakers and bench carpenters, with median pay of $46,680 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 128,730, in May 2007. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 1,290 from 1820, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters: CNC routers and CAD/CAM software, 1980 to 2000.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to decline 2.9% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

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
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters: jobs and pay since 1820 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-7011

Chicago

Future History. "Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters: jobs and pay since 1820." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-7011.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_51_7011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters: jobs and pay since 1820}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/51-7011}}, 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.

drag to travel through time
1700172517501775180018251850187519001925195019752000now
Country
2026
Known then as Cabinetmaker / Joiner / Cabinet-Maker (colonial and early republic era)
Known then as Cabinet Maker / Furniture Maker (industrializing craft era)
Known then as Cabinet Maker / Bench Carpenter (industrial furniture-manufacturing era)
Known then as Cabinetmaker / Cabinet and Millwork Carpenter (custom and production split era)
Known then as Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters (BLS SOC 51-7011)
Known today as Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters (BLS SOC 51-7011)
Projected to still be called Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters (BLS SOC 51-7011)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
77K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$46,680
Est.

≈ $45,483 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1754

Thomas Chippendale publishes The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director in London, the most comprehensive collection of furniture designs yet assembled. The book reaches American cabinetmakers within months and becomes the dominant pattern book for the trade through the end of the 18th century, giving the occupation a named design vocabulary for the first time. Philadelphia, Newport, and Boston cabinetmakers adapt Chippendale's designs to American woods, particularly walnut and later mahogany, and to the tastes of a colonial merchant class that wants to signal prosperity without appearing to ape the English aristocracy.

Beat · 1829

The Society of Journeyman Cabinetmakers of Philadelphia organizes to push for standardized minimum wages and an eleven-hour working day. The campaign initially fails, but the attempt marks cabinetmaking as a trade with a sufficiently large and self-conscious urban workforce to support collective labor action, decades before formal unions reach most craft trades. By this date the Philadelphia region employs over 2,100 furniture workers of all types, including 1,290 cabinetmakers.

Beat · 1857

The railroad reaches Grand Rapids, Michigan, reducing travel time to the eastern furniture markets from two or three weeks to two or three days. This is the final enabling condition for the city's emergence as "Furniture Capital of America": the region already had skilled immigrant cabinetmakers from the Netherlands, Sweden, and England; timber in nearby forests; and the Furniture Market trade show. The Grand Rapids furniture industry employs roughly 12,000 workers by 1929, becoming the dominant production center for mid-market factory furniture in the United States.

Beat · 1929

The Grand Rapids furniture industry employs approximately 12,000 workers at its peak before the Great Depression. By 1933, wages in the sector have fallen 50% and 30% of Grand Rapids furniture companies have closed. The Depression devastates the high-end custom furniture market, which had anchored the premium tier of cabinetmaking employment. Grand Rapids eventually recovers by shifting toward contract furniture: office systems, school furniture, and commercial seating, a pivot that transforms the remaining workforce toward engineered wood products and away from solid-wood cabinetry.

Beat · 1966

The first numerically controlled routing and shaping machine enters the woodworking industry, capable of milling, drilling, and boring at any angle using a punched-paper-tape program. This is CNC technology's arrival in woodworking, though widespread adoption waits two more decades until affordable microcomputers drive down equipment costs. The 1966 machine was an industrial prototype; the practical CNC router that transforms cabinet shops does not arrive until the early 1980s.

Beat · 1985

IKEA opens its first US store in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. When IKEA entered the US market, only 2% of American furniture was flat-packed; within seven years that share had increased fivefold. The flat-pack model eliminates the cabinetmaker from the supply chain entirely for a large category of consumer furniture: the factory assembles flat components, the customer assembles at home, and no custom sizing or fitting is required. This structural change compresses the mass-market segment where American production cabinetmakers had competed most directly on price.

Beat · 2001

China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 accelerates the offshoring of furniture manufacturing. US furniture imports from China rise sharply through the 2000s, directly displacing domestic production capacity. The furniture and wood products manufacturing sector, which had employed approximately 700,000 workers at its April 2000 peak, loses 60% of those jobs by 2020. Taiwan had been the dominant import supplier through 1994; China's lower wage rates and rapid factory build-out then take over the mass-production tier. The cabinetmakers most insulated from this pressure are those doing custom residential work (kitchens, bathrooms, built-ins) that cannot be container-shipped flat from Asia.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace cabinetmakers and bench carpenters? 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 published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
-2.9%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 51-7011 (Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters): 81.8 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 79.4 thousand in 2035, a change of -2.4 thousand (-2.9%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (6.4% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
4.4%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 51-7011.00 Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters. Shown: human-rated β = 0.044, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.088; GPT-4-rated β 0.118. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for cabinetmakers and bench carpenters

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereRun sheet-goods optimization through nesting software (Mozaik Optimizer or Cabinet Vision) to generate machine-ready G-code cutlists that minimize material waste, then review and approve the nested layout before sending to the CNC router.

Run sheet-goods optimization through nesting software (Mozaik Optimizer or Cabinet Vision) to generate machine-ready G-code cutlists that minimize material waste, then review and approve the nested layout before sending to the CNC router.[5],[6]

Where your edge is

Inspect nesting output for grain direction, defect avoidance, and special-order panel layouts that the optimizer cannot flag automatically; human approval before cutting prevents costly material loss.

AI is sitting alongside you hereGenerate concept sketches or AI-assisted mood boards (Midjourney, Vizcom) to show customers style directions early in a project, then refine approved concepts into a buildable 3D model in SketchList 3D or Fusion 360.

Generate concept sketches or AI-assisted mood boards (Midjourney, Vizcom) to show customers style directions early in a project, then refine approved concepts into a buildable 3D model in SketchList 3D or Fusion 360.[7],[8]

Where your edge is

Use generative image tools as a rapid-iteration client communication aid, not as a source of build dimensions; verify all proportions in the CAD model before committing to a cutlist.

AI is sitting alongside you hereEstimate material quantities and job costs using integrated quoting tools in cabinet software (Mozaik, Cabinet Vision) or spreadsheets, accounting for material prices, labor hours, hardware, and waste factors, then present the quote to the customer.

Estimate material quantities and job costs using integrated quoting tools in cabinet software (Mozaik, Cabinet Vision) or spreadsheets, accounting for material prices, labor hours, hardware, and waste factors, then present the quote to the customer.[9],[1]

Where your edge is

Software automates the arithmetic once you model the job, but your judgment sets labor rates, flags scope creep, and identifies when a customer's spec will require non-standard materials that drive price.

Where cabinetmakers and bench carpenters go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Commercial and Industrial Designers

Cabinetmakers who already use 3D design software and present renders to clients have a practical foundation for commercial or industrial design; the pivot rewards those who enjoy the design-and-specification phase more than the production phase.

What you'd add
  • · Autodesk Fusion 360 or SolidWorks for product design
  • · Materials science beyond wood (metals, plastics, composites)
  • · Design principles: ergonomics, human factors, aesthetics
  • · Portfolio development and client presentation skills
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of cabinetmakers and bench carpenters changed since 1700?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Hand tools only: planes, saws, chisels, braces (colonial and early republic craft era)

    The 18th-century cabinetmaker worked entirely with hand tools, most imported from England: the inventory of a Williamsburg shop in the 1760s listed many planes of different profiles, several saws, many chisels and gouges, and a range of boring tools. The plane was the central instrument of the trade, used to flatten, smooth, fit, and profile every surface. Mortise and tenon joints, dovetails, and hand-cut mouldings were the vocabulary of the craft. Speed was entirely a function of the craftsman's physical skill; quality was expressed through the precision of fit achieved by eye and touch. A competent journeyman cabinetmaker could produce a chest of drawers in approximately two weeks working alone, or a dining table in three to four days. The trade followed European design fashions (Queen Anne, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton) circulated via pattern books, adapting them to American woods and client tastes. There was no formal credential: skills were acquired through multi-year apprenticeships, typically beginning at age 12-14.

  • Steam-powered machinery: circular saw, band saw, planer, lathe (industrial furniture era)

    Steam-powered woodworking machinery arrived in American furniture shops in the 1830s-1840s and transformed the trade within a generation. The circular saw (practical shop versions from the 1820s onward), the steam-driven band saw, the thickness planer, and the wood-turning lathe meant that rough dimensioning, resawing, and repetitive turning operations could be done by machine at a fraction of the hand-labor cost. Ebenezer Ball of Grand Rapids, credited as "the true father of the machine-made furniture industry," was already using power machinery around 1849. The railroad's arrival in Grand Rapids in 1857 connected the new machine-assisted factories to eastern markets within days instead of weeks. By the 1870s, Grand Rapids firms deliberately called themselves "furniture makers" rather than "cabinetmakers" to emphasize the machine-made character of their work. The cabinetmaker's role split: one stream became the production worker in a furniture factory, running machines and assembling at the bench; the other remained the custom craftsman who still relied on hand tools for fitting, carving, and finishing. The machine era did not deskill the latter but it did expand the former into a much larger industrial workforce.

    Effect on the work

    Machine adoption in the furniture industry enabled Grand Rapids to employ thousands of furniture workers by 1929 and Grand Rapids to claim the identity of "Furniture Capital of the United States." A single skilled operator running a planer or lathe could produce what previously required several journeymen working by hand, compressing wages in the production tier while premium custom work retained its craft premium.

  • Electric power tools and production lines: router, shaper, spindle moulder

    Electrification of the workshop arrived broadly in the 1920s-1930s, replacing steam-shaft drives with individual electric motors on each machine and enabling smaller shops to mechanize affordably for the first time. The handheld electric router, commercialized by Stanley in 1930s and widely adopted post-World War II, gave the bench carpenter a portable cutting tool capable of producing complex profiles, dadoes, and rabbets in minutes instead of hours. The post-war housing boom of the late 1940s and 1950s created a new demand center: factory-built kitchen cabinets. Face-frame cabinetry, cut on table saws and assembled with pneumatic nailers, became the dominant production format. Companies like Masco and Kraftmaid began standardizing cabinet sizes and building assembly-line operations. Custom cabinetmaking persisted for high-end residential work, but the production segment now employed far more workers in lower-skill, higher-output roles. The trade split more sharply: bench carpenters in factories ran shapers and sanders; custom cabinetmakers in smaller shops retained broader craft knowledge.

  • CNC routers and CAD/CAM software (first wave: production shops)

    The first numerically controlled routing machine reached the woodworking industry in 1966, but the real adoption curve in cabinet shops began in the early 1980s when affordable microcomputers made CNC economically viable for mid-size manufacturers. CNC technology shifted from enterprise-level equipment to shop-floor tools: a CNC router could cut, drill, and shape sheet goods to exact tolerances without a skilled operator guiding every pass, enabling one operator to produce what previously required two or three craftspeople at manual machines. The woodworking industry adopted CNC routers faster than almost any other manufacturing sector; by 2025 they account for a sizeable share of woodworking machinery market revenue. For the cabinetmaker, the arrival of CNC did not eliminate the trade but changed what skills mattered: setting up toolpaths, loading programs, reading G-code, and troubleshooting feeds and speeds replaced the hand-tool dexterity that had defined the occupation for two centuries. Custom shops that could not afford early CNC remained hand-skill dependent; production shops that adopted CNC saw output per worker rise sharply.

    Effect on the work

    Not all of that employment decline was CNC-driven (offshoring to China was the larger factor post-2001), but CNC set the productivity baseline that made it possible to maintain output with far fewer workers.

  • Flat-pack furniture (IKEA US entry 1985) and offshore competition

    IKEA opened its first US store in 1985; within seven years, flat-pack furniture's share of the US furniture market had increased fivefold. Flat-pack and offshore imports compressed the middle market for manufactured furniture: the price tier where American production cabinet shops had competed most effectively was exposed directly to low-cost imports from Taiwan (the dominant supplier through 1994) and then China (which rose rapidly after 2000). The Woodworking Network notes that the furniture and wood products sector lost half a million jobs, or a large share of its April 2000 employment peak, in the two decades following. For cabinetmakers, the production-shop tier contracted most sharply; the custom residential tier (high-end kitchens, built-ins, one-off pieces) proved more resilient because import competition and flat-pack cannot replicate custom sizing, premium wood species, and on-site installation. The net effect was a bifurcation of the occupation: factory bench carpenters declined; custom cabinetmakers held steadier, if in smaller absolute numbers.

    Effect on the work

    Furniture manufacturing employment fell between 2000 and 2020, a decline. Cabinetmakers and bench carpenters (51-7011) fell from 132,630 in 2000 to 79,540 in 2024, a decline over the same period.

  • CAD/CAM cabinet design software and nested-based machining (second wave: custom shops)

    By the mid-2000s, cabinet design software like Mozaik and Cabinet Vision had brought CAD/CAM workflows within reach of two-person custom shops, not just production facilities. A cabinetmaker could now design a full kitchen in 3D, generate a cutlist and hardware schedule, produce machine-ready G-code, and present a photorealistic rendering to the client from a single software package. Nested-based machining, where a CNC router cuts an entire sheet of parts in a single program run from an optimized layout, reduced material waste compared to hand-cut operations and cut production time on a standard kitchen. The software-plus-CNC combination changed the custom cabinetmaker's economic model: a two-person shop with a CNC router and good software could now compete on price and lead time with mid-size production shops. The design and client-communication skills once reserved for architects and interior designers became part of the cabinetmaker's toolkit.

  • AI design tools and generative renderings (Midjourney, Vizcom, AI-assisted quoting)

    From 2022, generative AI image tools became practical for client-facing design work: a cabinetmaker could generate photorealistic mood-board images from text prompts, turn hand sketches into polished renderings via Vizcom, and present ten style directions to a client in an hour of work that would previously have taken a day. AI-assisted quoting features in cabinet software (Mozaik, Cabinet Vision) automate the arithmetic of material and labor cost estimation once a job is modeled. These tools have augmented the design-and-sales phase of the cabinetmaker's work without replacing the physical bench skills that remain the trade's core. The tasks most exposed to AI are specification drafting, style rendering, and cut-list optimization; the tasks most resistant to AI are joint fitting, surface finishing, wood selection, and on-site installation against irregular walls. The net effect as of 2026 is that a skilled cabinetmaker who adopts these tools can manage a larger project load with the same bench hours, raising revenue per worker rather than replacing workers.

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Cabinetmakers and Bench Carpenters employment and pay by year

On record since1700
Latest US employment77,170 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$46,680 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook-2.9% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

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 72311)

    Employment, 2020
    15,900, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 72311 Cabinetmakers, 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$42,000, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 72311 Cabinetmakers, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
18201,290n/aEst., Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia Researched contextReport
187068,000n/aDecennial Census 1940 Researched contextReport
190081,000$455Decennial Census 1900 (employment) Researched contextEst., Annual earnings estimate for a… (pay) Researched contextReport
1950130,000n/aDecennial Census 1950 Researched contextReport
2000132,630n/aBLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
2003126,350$24,550BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
2004121,380$25,290BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2005121,660$26,020BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
2006127,780$27,010BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
2007128,730$27,970BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
2008120,960$28,980BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200999,870$29,570BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201084,170$30,130BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201181,260$30,530BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201278,140$30,980BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201382,770$31,110BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201488,170$31,580BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201593,650$32,270BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201697,980$33,050BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201797,820$33,920BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
2018102,100$34,740BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201999,400$35,790BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202093,300$36,710BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202193,070$37,540BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202295,980$38,810BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202388,460$43,260BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202479,540$46,020BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202577,170$46,680BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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