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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3213

Pharmaceutical technicians and assistants

Pharmaceutical technicians and assistants perform a variety of tasks associated with dispensing medicinal products under the guidance of a pharmacist or other health professional. Tasks include - (a) preparing medications and other pharmaceutical compounds under the guidance of a pharmacist or other health professional; (b) dispensing medicines and drugs to clients and giving written and oral instructions on their use, as prescribed by medical doctors, veterinarians or other health professionals; (c) receiving prescriptions or refill requests from health professionals and verifying that information is complete and accurate according to medical record-keeping standards; (d) maintaining proper storage and security conditions for drugs; (e) filling and labelling containers with prescribed medications; (f) assisting clients by answering questions, locating items or referring them to a pharmacist for medication information; (g) pricing and filing prescriptions that have been filled and establishing and maintaining patient records, including lists of medications taken by individual patients; (h) ordering, labelling, and counting stocks of medications, chemicals and supplies, and entering inventory data into record-keeping systems; (i) cleaning and preparing equipment and containers used to prepare and dispense medicines and pharmaceutical compounds. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Dispensing technician - Pharmaceutical assistant - Pharmaceutical technician Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Pharmacist - 2262 - Pharmacology technician - 3141 - Pharmacy aide - 5329

A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't. It ranks 242 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • pharmacy assistant
  • pharmacy technician

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

70
Holds up
against AI Minimal Exposure

AI could take on 30 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 30 = 70

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

41.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

34.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 18.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

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.

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 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 41.4 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.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 50.5, while the average is 30. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 50.5

    Pricing and filing prescriptions that have been filled and establish and maintaining patient records, including lists of medications taken by individual patients

    Medium
  2. 42

    Receiving prescriptions or refill requests from health professionals and verifying that information is complete and accurate according to medical record-keeping standards

    Low
  3. 38.5

    Assisting clients by answering questions, locating items or referring them to a pharmacist for medication information

    Low
  4. 33.3

    Ordering, labelling, and counting stock of medications, chemicals and supplies, and entering inventory data into records-keeping systems

    Low
  5. 28.2

    Dispensing medicines and drugs to clients and giving written and oral instructions on their use, as prescribed by medical doctors, veterinarians or other health professionals

    Low
  6. 24

    Preparing medications and other pharmaceutical compounds under the guidance of a pharmacist or other health professional

    Very Low
  7. 21.5

    Maintaining proper storage and security conditions for drugs

    Very Low
  8. 17

    Filling and labelling containers with prescribed medications

    Very Low
  9. 15

    Cleaning and preparing equipment and containers used to prepare and dispense medicines and pharmaceutical compounds.

    Very Low

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

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

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

AI helps you
69
AI does it for you
29

Helping wins by 40 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3112

Compared with similar jobs

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” group, averaging 65.3. This one is above that.