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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3255

Physiotherapy technicians and assistants

An app can count your exercises. It can't feel where the knot is.

AI barely touches five of the six tasks, including massage, ultrasound and other hands-on treatments. Recording patients' progress is mostly out of its reach too.

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

Physiotherapy technicians and assistants provide physical therapeutic treatments to patients in circumstances where functional movement is threatened by injury, disease or impairment. Therapies are usually provided according to rehabilitative plans established by a physiotherapist or other health professional. Tasks include - (a) administering manual treatments such as massage therapy or pressure point therapy; (b) administering electrical modality treatments, ultrasound and other physical therapies using specialized techniques and equipment; (c) instructing, motivating, safeguarding and assisting patients as they practise physical exercises, relaxation techniques and functional activities; (d) conferring with physiotherapists or other health care providers to evaluate patient information for planning, modifying and coordinating treatment; (e) monitoring and recording patients’ progress during treatment, including measuring their range-of-joint motion and vital signs; (f) fitting patients for orthopaedic braces, prostheses and other physical support devices such as crutches, and instructing patients in the use of such devices. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Acupressure therapist - Electrotherapist - Hydrotherapist - Massage therapist - Physical rehabilitation technician - Physiotherapy technician - Shiatsu therapist Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Physiotherapist - 2264 - Chiropractor - 2269 - Occupational therapist - 2269 - Podiatrist - 2269

  • aromatherapist
  • shiatsu practitioner
  • massage therapist
  • physiotherapy assistant
  • animal therapist
  • sophrologist

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

83 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

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: Not Exposed

95 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 6 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 17 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 17 = 83.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 42.3 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?

Physiotherapy technicians and assistants 83

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.

  • Recording progress and measurements.
  • Exercise programmes and reminders by app.
  • Scheduling and notes.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Massage and manual therapy.
  • Motivating and supporting patients.
  • Fitting braces and supports.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote rehab with sensors and video.
  • Wearables that track movement.
  • More care for older people at home.

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

20 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 52 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 36 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

42 How
hands-on
36 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, averaged across 5 US jobs .

finger skill 44.2 · hand skill 40.2 · cramped spaces 22.1 · 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 27, against an average of 17. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 27

    Monitoring and recording patients' progress during treatments, including measuring their range-of-joint motion and vital signs

    Low
  2. 22

    Conferring with physiotherapists or other health care providers to evaluate patient information for planning, modifying, and coordinating treatment

    Very Low
  3. 18

    Instructing, motivating, safeguarding and assisting patients as they practice physical exercises, relaxation techniques and functional activities

    Very Low
  4. 17

    Fitting patients for orthopaedic braces, prostheses and other physical supportive devices such as crutches, and instructing patients in the use of such devices.

    Very Low
  5. 11

    Administering electrical modality treatments, ultrasound and other physical therapies using specialized techniques and equipment

    Very Low
  6. 7

    Administering manual treatments such as massage therapy or pressure point therapy

    Very Low

6 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
52
AI does it for you
20

Sidekick wins, by 32 points.

How good a match is this?

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 4116, 4233

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 0.06% 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

50
50

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.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 5 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

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 physio assistants and massage therapists be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. The most exposed task is monitoring and recording progress, rated Low; hands-on treatment and supporting exercise rate Very Low. Apps and sensors help track rehab, but the treatment and encouragement are human.

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 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →