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Clerical support workers · code 4223

Telephone switchboard operators

Telephone switchboard operators operate telephone communications switchboards and consoles to establish telephone connections, receive caller inquiries, service problem reports, and record and relay messages to staff or clients. Tasks include - (a) operating switchboards and consoles to connect, hold, transfer and disconnect telephone calls; (b) making connections for outgoing calls; (c) dealing with telephone inquiries and recording messages; (d) forwarding messages to staff or clients; (e) investigating operating system problems and informing repair services. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Answering service operator - Telephone switchboard operator

Most of the tasks are affected. It ranks 392 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • telephone switchboard operator

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

46.3
Holds up
against AI Exposed: Gradient 3

AI could take on 53.7 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 53.7 = 46.3

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

13.1
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

19.3
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 31.3 · hand skill 22.4 · cramped spaces 4.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on under 50 Less than half hands-on

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.

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 13.1 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.

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 66.5, while the average is 53.7. 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. 66.5

    Operating switchboards and consoles to connect, hold, transfer, and disconnect telephone calls

    Medium
  2. 61.5

    Dealing with telephone inquiries and recording messages

    Medium
  3. 58.1

    Forwarding messages to staff or clients

    Medium
  4. 53.5

    Making connections for outgoing calls

    Medium
  5. 29

    Investigating operating system problems and informing repair services.

    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
70
AI does it for you
65

Helping wins by 5 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 5616

Compared with similar jobs

There are 29 jobs in the “Clerical support workers” group, averaging 46.6. This one is below that.