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Service and sales workers · code 5142

Beauticians and related workers

An app can book the treatment. It can't do your nails.

Booking appointments and taking payment is the one task AI could take a fair chunk of. It barely touches six of the eight, including massage and hair removal.

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

Beauticians and related workers give facial and body beauty treatments, apply cosmetics and make-up and give other kinds of treatment to individuals in order to improve their appearance. Tasks include - (a) cleaning and applying creams, lotions and related products to face and other parts of the body; (b) giving facial and body massage; (c) applying make-up to clients of a beauty parlour or to actors and other performers; (d) cleaning, shaping and polishing finger- and toenails and treating ailments of the human foot such as corns, calluses or deformed toenails; (e) attending to clients taking baths and administering elementary massage; (f) using waxing, sugaring and depilation techniques to remove unwanted bodily hair; (g) advising clients on diet and exercise to assist in weight loss and slimming; (h) arranging appointments and collecting payments. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Bath attendant - Beautician - Make-up artist - Manicurist - Pedicurist - Slimming consultant

  • make-up artist
  • masseur/masseuse
  • beauty salon attendant
  • weight loss consultant
  • manicurist
  • pedicurist
  • hair removal technician
  • make-up and hair designer
  • personal stylist
  • tanning consultant
  • spa attendant
  • aesthetician

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

82 / 100

Strongly holds up against AI

Most of this job still needs an actual human. AI would mostly be making the tea.

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: Not Exposed

121 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 18.3 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 18.3 = 81.7.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 41.6 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?

Beauticians and related workers 82

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.

  • Bookings, reminders and payments.
  • Trying looks on with virtual make-up tools.
  • Product recommendations and stock.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Hands-on treatments: make-up, nails, waxing, massage.
  • Making clients feel relaxed and cared for.
  • Adapting to each client's skin and needs.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Clients arriving with AI-generated looks.
  • Skin analysis tools.
  • Social media as the shop window.

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

30 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 58 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

42 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 36 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

42 How
hands-on
36 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 8 US jobs , so treat it as rough.

finger skill 42.7 · hand skill 40.8 · cramped spaces 23.9 · 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 54, against an average of 18. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 54

    Arranging appointments and collecting payments.

    Medium
  2. 43

    Advising clients on diet and exercise to assist in weight loss and slimming

    Low
  3. 11

    Applying make-up to clients of a beauty parlour or to actors and other performers

    Very Low
  4. 9

    Cleaning and applying creams, lotions and related products to face and other parts of the body

    Very Low
  5. 8

    Attending to clients taking baths and administering elementary massage

    Very Low
  6. 8

    Cleaning, shaping and polishing finger- and toe-nails and treating ailments of the human foot such as corns, calluses or deformed toe-nails

    Very Low
  7. 8

    Giving facial and body massage

    Very Low
  8. 7

    Using waxing, sugaring and depilation techniques to remove unwanted bodily hair

    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
58
AI does it for you
30

Sidekick wins, by 28 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 3995, 4511, 4515, 4518, 6211

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 0.06% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

40
60

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.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 5 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 beauticians be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Booking and payment are the one Medium task, and giving diet advice rates Low; make-up, facials, massage and nails rate Very Low. AI takes the bookings and can suggest looks; the treatments 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 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” family, averaging 74. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →