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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3339

Business services agents not elsewhere classified

AI can book the group tour. An auctioneer still has to work the room.

AI could take a fair chunk of half the six tasks, including researching services and what buyers need. Negotiating and signing contracts are mostly out of its reach.

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

This unit group covers business services agents not classified elsewhere in Minor Group 333: Business Services Agents. For instance, the group includes those who establish business contacts, sell business services such as advertising space in the media, arrange contracts for performances of athletes, entertainers and artists, for the publication of books, the production of plays, or the recording, performance and sale of music, sell property and goods by auction and who design and organize package and group tours. In such cases tasks would include - (a) obtaining information about services to be sold and needs of prospective buyers; (b) negotiating contracts on behalf of seller or buyer and explaining terms of sale and payment to client; (c) signing agreements on behalf of seller or buyer and ensuring that the contract is honoured; (d) making sure that the business service purchased is made available to the buyer in the agreed format at the agreed time; (e) selling by auction various kinds of property, cars, commodities, livestock, art, jewellery and other objects. (f) organizing group tours for business or vacation travel and making bulk travel and accommodation bookings. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Advertising salesperson - Auctioneer - Literary agent - Musical performance agent - Sports agent - Theatrical agent - Tour operator

  • intellectual property consultant
  • relocation officer
  • auctioneer
  • tourism contract negotiator
  • publishing rights manager
  • promoter
  • advertising sales agent
  • tour operators manager
  • venue programmer
  • hospitality entertainment manager
  • talent agent

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

56 / 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 2

352 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 44.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 44.5 = 55.5.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Exposed: Gradient 2”: A good share of the tasks are affected.

This job rates 15.6 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?

Business services agents not elsewhere classified 56

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.

  • Research on services and buyers.
  • Bulk bookings and arrangements.
  • Checking delivery of services.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Auctioneering.
  • Negotiating contracts.
  • Making sure deals are honoured.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Online auctions.
  • AI booking agents.
  • Rights and licensing for AI training data.

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: Medium

50 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 71 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

16 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

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 9 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

16 How
hands-on
9 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 12 US jobs , so treat it as rough.

finger skill 14.7 · hand skill 5.8 · cramped spaces 6.7 · 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 60, against an average of 45. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 60

    Obtaining information about services to be sold and needs of prospective buyers

    Medium
  2. 54

    Making sure that the business service purchased is made available to the buyer in the agreed format at the agreed time

    Medium
  3. 52

    Organizing group tours for business or vacation travel and making bulk travel and accommodation bookings.

    Medium
  4. 40

    Selling by auction various kinds of property, cars, commodities, livestock, art, jewellery and other objects.

    Low
  5. 33

    Negotiating contracts on behalf of seller or buyer and explaining terms of sale and payment to client

    Low
  6. 29

    Signing agreements on behalf of seller or buyer and ensuring that contract is honoured

    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
71
AI does it for you
50

Sidekick wins, by 21 points.

How good a match is this?

8 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 2221, 2231, 2249, 4422, 5111, 5999, 6111, 6113

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?

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. This job makes up 1.33% of the conversations.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 10 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 business services agents be worried?

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

Parts of it are changing. Gathering information, delivering services and group bookings are rated Medium; auctioneering, negotiating and signing agreements are Low. Online booking and AI take on admin; deals and persuasion stay 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 →