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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3331

Clearing and forwarding agents

Clearing and forwarding agents carry out customs clearance procedures and ensure that insurance, export/import licences and other formalities are in order. Tasks include - (a) carrying out customs clearance procedures for exports or imports; (b) ensuring that insurance is in order; (c) ensuring that export/import licences and other formalities are in order; (d) signing and issuing bills of lading; (e) checking import/export documentation to determine cargo contents, and classifying goods into different fee or tariff groups, using a tariff coding system. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Clearing agent - Forwarding agent - Shipping agent

Most of the tasks are affected. It ranks 407 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • forwarding manager
  • international forwarding operations coordinator
  • customs and excise officer

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

42.7
Holds up
against AI Exposed: Gradient 3

AI could take on 57.3 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 57.3 = 42.7

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

59
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs

24.3
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 30.8 · hand skill 29.1 · cramped spaces 13 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

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 59 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, and for work like this robots are the bigger question.

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 64, while the average is 57.3. 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. 64

    Ensuring that insurance is in order

    Medium
  2. 63.3

    Checking import/export documentation to determine cargo contents, and classifying goods into different fee or tariff groups, using a tariff coding system.

    Medium
  3. 61.5

    Ensuring that export/import licences and other formalities are in order

    Medium
  4. 55

    Signing and issuing bills of lading

    Medium
  5. 42.5

    Carrying out customs clearing procedures for exports or imports

    Low

5 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
71
AI does it for you
64

Helping wins by 7 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 5912

Compared with similar jobs

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” group, averaging 65.7. This one is below that.