>Can some of welding be automated?

Huge amounts have been doing it for decades.

Manual work pays better than ever though.

And plenty of alterations going on all the time after all the automation dust had settled manufacturing most fashions, a lot less manual work is of course being done but it's still everywhere. You do have to be good or you're not going to do half as well as you could though.

The thing is, automation should be expected to slow or stall sooner or later, automation's not suitable for every little bit of welding or sewing that needs to keep going on. Only the most suitable, of course ;)

These are just random examples, if you want to make absolutely sure you won't be automated away by the internet, build a valuable skill that doesn't depend on the internet at all, nor look anywhere near the places where automation is emerging that it wasn't doing before.

If you eventually figure out how to automate that skill it would be something.

Just like the internet though, there can be extra credit for being first :)

One of the most valuable things to be able to build single-handedly is something that can not be mass-produced by any stretch of the imagination.

You might stick with that alone, or pivot to something with more of a financial upside, but you would always have something to fall back on if needed. Plus give you less worry about taking financial risks than you would have been, considering the same resources and/or capital to work with.

And on a regular basis revisit how far you can stretch your imagination to see if your baseline fallback still doesn't look like it will ever be automated in a way that would effect you.