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Professionals · code 2222

Midwifery professionals

AI can register the birth. It can't catch the baby.

Registering births and research are where AI could take a fair chunk. It barely touches four of the eight tasks, including caring for newborns and easing pain in labour.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Midwifery professionals plan, manage, provide and evaluate midwifery care services before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth. They provide delivery care for reducing health risks to women and newborn children, working autonomously or in teams with other health care providers. Tasks include - (a) planning, providing and evaluating care and support services for women and babies before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth according to the practice and standards of modern midwifery care; (b) providing advice to women and families and conducting community education on health, nutrition, hygiene, exercise, birth and emergency plans, breastfeeding, infant care, family planning and contraception, lifestyle and other topics related to pregnancy and childbirth; (c) assessing progress during pregnancy and childbirth, managing complications and recognizing warning signs requiring referral to a medical doctor with specialized skills in obstetrics; (d) monitoring the health status of newborns, managing complications and recognizing warning signs requiring referral to a medical doctor with specialized skills in neonatology; (e) monitoring pain and discomfort experienced by women during labour and delivery and alleviating pain using a variety of therapies, including the use of painkilling drugs; (f) reporting births to government authorities to meet legal and professional requirements; (g) conducting research on midwifery practices and procedures and disseminating findings such as through scientific papers and reports; (h) planning and conducting midwifery education activities in clinical and community settings. Example of the occupations classified here: - Professional midwife Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Professional nurse - 2221 - Associate professional nurse - 3221 - Associate professional midwife - 3222 - Nursing aide (clinic or hospital) - 5321 Note The distinctions between nursing and midwifery professionals and associate professionals should be made on the basis of the nature of the work performed in relation to the tasks specified in this definition. The qualifications held by individuals or that predominate in the country are not the main factor in making this distinction, as training arrangements for nurses and midwives vary widely between countries and have varied over time within countries. Midwives who combine midwifery education or research with clinical midwifery practice are classified in Unit Group 2222: Midwifery Professionals.

  • midwife

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

70 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure

241 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 29.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 29.9 = 70.1.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 41.9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Midwifery professionals 70

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Birth registration and records.
  • Research summaries.
  • Education materials.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Supporting women through labour.
  • Managing complications.
  • Caring for newborns.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote monitoring in pregnancy.
  • Digital maternity records.
  • Continuity of care models.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

30 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 67 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

42 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 46 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

42 How
hands-on
46 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 44.6 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 50.7 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 54, against an average of 30. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 54

    Reporting births to government authorities to meet legal and professional requirements

    Medium
  2. 52

    Conducting research on midwifery practices and procedures and disseminating findings such as through scientific papers and reports

    Medium
  3. 28

    Planning and conducting midwifery education activities in clinical and community settings.

    Low
  4. 27

    Providing advice to women and families and conducting community education on health, nutrition, hygiene, exercise, birth and emergency plans, breastfeeding, infant care, family planning and contraception, lifestyle and other topics related to pregnancy and childbirth

    Low
  5. 24

    Planning, providing and evaluating care and support services for women and babies before, during and after pregnancy and childbirth according to the practice and standards of modern midwifery care

    Very Low
  6. 22

    Assessing progress during pregnancy and childbirth, managing complications and recognizing warning signs requiring referral to a medical doctor with specialized skills in obstetrics

    Very Low
  7. 20

    Monitoring the health status of newborns, managing complications and recognizing warning signs requiring referral to a medical doctor with specialized skills in neonatology

    Very Low
  8. 14

    Monitoring pain and discomfort experienced by women during labour and delivery and alleviating pain using a variety of therapies, including the use of painkilling drugs

    Very Low

8 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
67
AI does it for you
30

Sidekick wins, by 37 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2541

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.03% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

59
41

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should midwives be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

The paperwork and research are moving. Reporting births and research are rated Medium, and education and advice are Low; care during pregnancy, labour and after birth rates Very Low. AI can take on records; midwifery is hands-on care.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 92 jobs in the “Professionals” family, averaging 61. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →