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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3359

Regulatory government associate professionals not elsewhere classified

AI can flag the suspicious prices. Visiting the business is still an inspector's job.

All four tasks are mostly out of AI's reach: keeping records for investigations, and checking prices, wages, and weights and measures.

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

This unit group covers government regulatory associate professionals not classified elsewhere. For instance, the group includes agricultural, fisheries, forestry, prices, wages and weights and measures inspectors. In such cases tasks would include - (a) examining places of business to ensure the use of correct weights and measures in trade; (b) monitoring price regulations to assess appropriateness of costs for goods and services to protect consumer interests; (c) monitoring wage regulations to ensure appropriate levels of pay for work performed and to assess compliance with employment standards legislation; (d) performing related investigative and administrative tasks to record findings, document compliance problems or inappropriate business practices and to prepare reports and correspondence. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Agricultural inspector - Fisheries inspector - Forestry inspector - Prices inspector - Wage inspector - Weights and measures inspector Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Fire inspector - 3112 - Health inspector - 3257 - Occupational health and safety inspector - 3257 - Pollution inspector - 3257 - Sanitary inspector - 3257

  • fisheries observer
  • freight inspector
  • forestry inspector
  • gaming inspector
  • health and safety inspector
  • weights and measures inspector
  • consumer rights advisor
  • agricultural inspector

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

64 / 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

283 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 4 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 36 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 36 = 64.

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 50.8 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?

Regulatory government associate professionals not elsewhere classified 64

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 findings and compliance problems.
  • Monitoring prices and wages with data.
  • Targeting inspections.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Inspecting businesses in person.
  • Questioning and investigating.
  • Enforcing rules fairly.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Data-driven inspection targeting.
  • Online and platform businesses.
  • Checking claims about AI products.

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

41 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?

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

51 How
hands-on
33 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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 32.1 · hand skill 30.3 · cramped spaces 35.8 · 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 47, against an average of 36. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 47

    Performing related investigative and administrative tasks to record findings, document compliance problems or inappropriate business practices and to prepare reports and correspondence.

    Low
  2. 42

    Monitoring price regulations to assess appropriateness of costs for goods and services to protect consumer interests

    Low
  3. 28

    Monitoring wage regulations to ensure appropriate levels of pay for work performed and to assess compliance with employment standards legislation

    Low
  4. 27

    Examining places of business to ensure the use of correct weights and measures in trade

    Low

4 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
41

Sidekick wins, by 26 points.

How good a match is this?

5 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 2249, 3113, 3121, 5619, 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?

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

51
49

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.

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 regulatory inspectors be worried?

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

Parts of it are changing. Recording findings, monitoring prices and wages and checking weights and measures all rate Low. Data analysis will help target inspections; visiting, questioning and enforcing 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 below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →