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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3351

Customs and border inspectors

E-gates can check the passport. Deciding who to stop is still an officer's judgement.

Writing up findings and violations is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Detaining people, seizing goods and patrolling the border it barely touches.

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

Customs and border inspectors check persons and vehicles crossing national borders to administer and enforce relevant government rules and regulations. Tasks include - (a) patrolling national borders and coastal waters to stop persons from illegally entering or leaving the country and from illegally importing or exporting currency or goods; (b) checking travel documents of persons crossing national borders to ensure that they have the necessary authorizations and certificates; (c) inspecting the luggage of persons crossing national borders to ensure that it conforms to government rules and regulations concerning import or export of goods and currencies; (d) examining transport documents and freight of vehicles crossing national borders to ensure conformity with government rules and regulations concerning goods in transit and the import and export of goods, and to verify that necessary payments have been made; (e) detaining persons and seizing prohibited and undeclared goods found to be in violation of immigration and customs laws; (f) coordinating and cooperating with other agencies involved in law enforcement, deportation and prosecution; (g) performing related administrative tasks to record findings, transactions, violations and determinations; (h) when necessary, testifying in a court of law about the circumstances and results of investigations carried out. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Border inspector - Customs inspector - Customs officer - Immigration officer - Passport checking officer

  • hand luggage inspector
  • customs officer
  • immigration officer

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

68 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

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: Minimal Exposure

257 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 8 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 32.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 32.1 = 67.9.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

This job rates 50.9 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?

Customs and border inspectors 68

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.

  • Automated passport gates.
  • Risk targeting of freight and travellers.
  • Recording findings and case files.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Questioning people and judging credibility.
  • Searches and seizures.
  • Patrols and detention.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Biometric border systems.
  • Detecting fraud and forged documents.
  • Rules on AI in border decisions.

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

37 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 67 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

51 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?

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 34 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

51 How
hands-on
34 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, helping and caring for others

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 10 US jobs , so treat it as rough.

finger skill 33.5 · hand skill 33.3 · cramped spaces 34.5 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7

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 53, against an average of 32. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 53

    Performing related administrative tasks to record findings, transactions, violations and determinations

    Medium
  2. 49

    Checking travel documents of persons crossing national borders to ensure that they have the necessary authorizations and certificates

    Low
  3. 43

    Examining transport documents and freight of vehicles crossing national borders to ensure conformity with government rules and regulations concerning goods in transit and the import and export of goods, and to verify that necessary payments have been made

    Low
  4. 30

    Inspecting the luggage of persons crossing national borders to ensure that it conforms to government rules and regulations concerning import or export of goods and currencies

    Low
  5. 28

    When necessary, testifying in a court of law about the circumstances and results of investigations carried out.

    Low
  6. 25

    Coordinating and cooperating with other agencies involved in law enforcement, deportation and prosecution

    Very Low
  7. 18

    Detaining persons and seizing prohibited and undeclared goods found to be in violation of immigration and customs laws

    Very Low
  8. 12

    Patrolling national borders and coastal waters to stop persons from illegally entering or leaving the country and from illegally importing or exporting currency or goods

    Very Low

8 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
67
AI does it for you
37

Sidekick wins, by 30 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 3113, 5995

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 0.33% 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 customs and border officers be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

Parts of it are changing. Recording findings is rated Medium, and checking documents, freight and luggage and testifying are Low; working with other agencies, detaining and patrolling rate Very Low. Automated gates and risk-targeting tools take on routine checks; interviews and enforcement 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 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →