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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3331

Clearing and forwarding agents

AI can classify the goods. When a shipment gets held at the border, it's still an agent.

AI could take a fair chunk of four of the five tasks, including checking insurance and import and export papers and issuing bills of lading. Getting goods through customs is mostly out of its reach.

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

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

  • 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.

43 / 100

Changing significantly

AI could do a real share of the everyday tasks. The job is changing shape, not vanishing.

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: Exposed: Gradient 3

407 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 57.3 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 57.3 = 42.7.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 3”: Most of the tasks are affected.

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.

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?

Clearing and forwarding agents 43

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.

  • Checking and classifying documents.
  • Licences and formalities.
  • Bills of lading.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Customs clearance problems.
  • Inspections.
  • Dealing with officials and clients.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Digital customs systems.
  • Changing trade rules.
  • AI classification tools.

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: High

64 could do without you

It could take over a lot of this job on its own. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

59 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 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.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 24 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

59 How
hands-on
24 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, less fiddly work

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 3 US jobs .

finger skill 30.8 · hand skill 29.1 · cramped spaces 13 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4

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 64, against an average of 57. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 64

    Ensuring that insurance is in order

    Medium
  2. 63

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

    Medium
  3. 62

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

    Medium
  4. 55

    Signing and issuing bills of lading

    Medium
  5. 43

    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 0.8-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
71
AI does it for you
64

Sidekick wins, by 7 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 5912

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 0.01% of all the conversations: a tiny slice, mostly the paperwork rather than the work. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

57
43

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 2 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 customs and freight forwarding agents be worried?

Short answer: not worried, but paying attention. The job is changing.

Much of the paperwork is exposed. Insurance, checking documentation, licences and bills of lading are rated Medium; customs clearance is Low. Digital customs systems and AI take on documents; problem-solving stays 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 66. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →