Service and sales workers · code 5131
Waiters
Your phone can take the payment. Good service still comes from a person.
Presenting the bill and taking payment is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. Setting and clearing tables it barely touches.
What they actually do (and what else they get called)
Waiters serve food and beverages at tables in dining and drinking places, clubs, institutions and canteens, on board ships and on passenger trains. Tasks include - (a) setting tables with clean linen, cutlery, crockery and glassware; (b) greeting customers and presenting them with menus and beverage lists; (c) advising on food and beverage choices; (d) taking orders for food and drinks and passing orders to kitchen or bar staff; (e) serving food and beverages to clients at tables; (f) clearing tables and returning dishes and cutlery to the kitchen; (g) presenting bills, accepting payment and operating point-of-sales machines and cash registers. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Sommelier - Waiter Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Café manager - 1412 - Restaurant manager - 1412 - Bartender - 5132 Notes Operators of small cafés, restaurants and bars for whom the management and supervision of staff is not a significant component of the work are classified in Unit Groups 5120: Cooks, 5131: Waiters or 5132: Bartenders, depending on the main tasks performed.
- waiter/waitress
- restaurant host/restaurant hostess
Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.
72 / 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.
The ILO's official verdict: Minimal Exposure
224 of 427 for holding up against AI
Not quite your week? Make it yours ↓
Why this score?
The ILO rated each of this job's 7 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 28.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 28.1 = 71.9.
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 48.2 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?
Waiters 72
vGo 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.
- Payments at the table.
- Orders through QR codes and tablets.
- Booking systems.
Man
What people still do better
Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.
- Serving food and drinks.
- Reading the table and looking after guests.
- Recommending dishes.
Both
What's arriving
New work that only exists because the AI does.
- Tablet and app ordering.
- Allergen and dietary information.
- Service as the reason to eat out.
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: Low
26 could do without you
It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 45 of 100.
The robot
The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.
How much it matters here: Some
48 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 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 26 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.
hands-on
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 2 US jobs .
finger skill 32.1 · hand skill 35.7 · cramped spaces 11.4 · 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 52, against an average of 28. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.
- 52
Presenting bills, accepting payment and operating point of sales machines and cash registers.
Medium - 41
Taking orders for food and drinks and passing order to kitchen or bar staff
Low - 33
Greeting customers and presenting them with menus and beverage lists
Low - 33
Advising on food and beverage choices
Low - 17
Serving food and beverages to clients at tables
Very Low - 14
Setting tables with clean linen, cutlery, crockery and glassware
Very Low - 8
Clearing tables and returning dishes and cutlery to kitchen
Very Low
7 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
New · the weekly task audit
Your week, your score
The score above assumes waiters spend the same time on every task. You don't. Slide each task to how much of your week it takes, and we'll re-weight the same ILO ratings to fit your job.
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
- Some
Your score
72 / 100
Same as the job as a whole, so far.
Move the sliders to make it yours.
The job as a whole: 72 / 100
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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
- 45
- AI does it for you
- 26
Sidekick wins, by 20 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 4312, 4315
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
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 0.17% of the conversations.
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 waiters be worried?
Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.
The ordering and payment side is changing. Taking payment is rated Medium, and taking orders, greeting and advising are Low; serving and clearing rate Very Low. QR-code ordering and pay-at-table are spreading, so the job leans towards hospitality.
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 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” family, averaging 75. This one is below the family average.
- Prison guards 86
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- Beauticians and related workers 82
- Fire-fighters 82
- Cooks 82
- Child care workers 81
- Protective services workers not elsew… 80
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- Security guards 80
- Driving instructors 80
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- Cleaning and housekeeping supervisors… 78
- Street food salespersons 78
- Food service counter attendants 76
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- Teachers' aides 76
- Home-based personal care workers 75
- Fashion and other models 75
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- Bartenders 74
- Building caretakers 73