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Service and sales workers · code 5152

Domestic housekeepers

AI can order the groceries. Running a household still takes someone who notices everything.

Buying and managing household supplies are mostly out of AI's reach. It barely touches five of the nine tasks, including cleaning and looking after minor injuries or illness.

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

Domestic housekeepers organize, supervise and carry out housekeeping functions in private households and small accommodation establishments with or without the support of subordinate staff. Tasks include - (a) supervising workers employed in households as domestic staff; (b) purchasing or controlling the purchase of supplies; (c) controlling storage and issue of supplies; (d) assisting in cases of minor injury or illness by performing tasks such as taking temperature, giving medicine, putting on bandages; (e) sweeping or vacuum-cleaning, washing and polishing floors, furniture and other fixtures. (f) making beds, cleaning bathrooms, supplying towels, soap and related items; (g) taking care of household pets and plants, receiving visitors, answering telephones, delivering messages and shopping for groceries; (h) preparing and cooking meals, setting and clearing tables and serving food and beverages; (i) cleaning kitchens and generally helping with kitchen work, including dishwashing. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Bed and breakfast operator - Domestic housekeeper - Butler Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Hotel manager - 1411 - Domestic helper - 9111 Note Operators of small accommodation establishments, such as some bed and breakfast establishments and small guest houses that provide accommodation and limited meal services to clients effectively as paying guests in private households, and for whom the management and supervision of staff is not a significant component of the work, are classified in Unit Group 5152: Domestic Housekeepers.

  • domestic housekeeper
  • bed and breakfast operator

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

80 / 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

142 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 9 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 19.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 19.9 = 80.1.

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.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 56 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Domestic housekeepers 80

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.

  • Online grocery and supply orders.
  • Stock control and household admin.
  • Scheduling staff and visitors.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Cooking, cleaning and caring for a home.
  • Looking after people, pets and visitors.
  • Handling minor illness and emergencies.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Managing smart home devices.
  • Short-let and guest house operations.
  • Care for older people living at home.

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

24 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 53 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

56 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 30 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

56 How
hands-on
30 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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 30.3 · hand skill 30.3 · cramped spaces 28 · 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 37, against an average of 20. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 37

    Purchasing or controlling the purchase of supplies

    Low
  2. 28

    Controlling storage and issue of supplies

    Low
  3. 28

    Taking care of household pets and plants, receiving visitors, answering telephones, delivering messages and shopping for groceries

    Low
  4. 27

    Supervising workers employed in households as domestic staff

    Low
  5. 14

    Making beds, cleaning bathrooms, supplying towels, soap and related items

    Very Low
  6. 14

    Preparing and cooking meals, setting and clearing tables and serving food and beverages.

    Very Low
  7. 12

    Cleaning kitchens and generally helping with kitchen work, including dishwashing.

    Very Low
  8. 10

    Assisting in cases of minor injury or illness by performing tasks such as taking temperature, giving medicine, putting on bandages

    Very Low
  9. 9

    Sweeping or vacuum-cleaning, washing and polishing floors, furniture and other fixtures.

    Very Low

9 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
53
AI does it for you
24

Sidekick wins, by 29 points.

How good a match is this?

3 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 1419, 4518, 8114

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 0.11% 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 housekeepers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No, though the admin is moving. Buying supplies, managing stores, running errands and supervising staff rate Low; cleaning, cooking and caring rate Very Low. Online ordering and smart home tools help, but the household still needs a person.

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 →