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Service and sales workers · code 5153

Building caretakers

Building caretakers take care of apartment houses, hotels, offices, churches and other buildings and maintain them and associated grounds in a clean and orderly condition. They may supervise other workers and contractors depending on the size and nature of the building concerned. Tasks include - (a) supervising the work of cleaning, housekeeping and building maintenance staff and contractors; (b) participating in cleaning, simple repairs and maintenance of building interiors; (c) tending furnaces and boilers to ensure provision of heat and hot water; (d) regulating conduct of tenants and visitors in such matters as noise abatement or misuse of property; (e) providing small services to absent tenants such as accepting deliveries on their behalf or providing requested information to callers; (f) notifying management and owners of buildings of the need for major repairs; (g) patrolling buildings to ensure security is maintained; (h) filling out registration forms and providing tenants with copies of rules. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Caretaker - Concierge (building) - Janitor - Sexton

A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't. It ranks 210 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • building caretaker

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

73.4
Holds up
against AI Minimal Exposure

AI could take on 26.6 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 26.6 = 73.4

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

53
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

31.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 35.7 · hand skill 34 · cramped spaces 25.5 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

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.

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

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 53 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

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 57.5, while the average is 26.6. 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. 57.5

    Filling out registration forms and providing tenants with copies of rules.

    Medium
  2. 40.5

    Providing small services to absent tenants such as accepting deliveries on their behalf or providing requested information to callers

    Low
  3. 29

    Notifying management and owners of buildings of the need for major repairs

    Low
  4. 21.8

    Supervising the work of cleaning, housekeeping and building maintenance staff and contractors

    Very Low
  5. 20

    Tending furnaces and boilers to ensure provision of heat and hot water

    Very Low
  6. 19.5

    Regulating conduct of tenants and visitors in such matters as noise abatement or misuse of property

    Very Low
  7. 15.5

    Patrolling buildings to ensure security is maintained

    Very Low
  8. 9.3

    Participating in cleaning, simple repairs and maintenance of building interiors

    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 0.7-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
60
AI does it for you
43

Helping wins by 17 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 8991

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.4. This one is below that.