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Service and sales workers · code 5163

Undertakers and embalmers

Undertakers and embalmers arrange funerals and perform various tasks in the disposal of human remains. Tasks include - (a) making arrangements for and conducting funerals, cremations and burials; (b) embalming human remains to retard or arrest the process of decay; (c) conforming to health and sanitation and ensuring that legal requirements concerning embalming are met; (d) incising and closing incisions on various parts of the body and reshaping or reconstructing disfigured or maimed human remains when necessary; (e) dressing human bodies and placing them in caskets; (f) conducting interviews to arrange for preparation of obituary notices, to assist with the selection of caskets or urns, and to determine the location and time of burials or cremations. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Embalmer - Undertaker

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 90 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • funeral services director
  • cemetery attendant
  • funeral attendant
  • embalmer

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

83.3
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 16.7 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 16.7 = 83.3

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

65.7
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs

29.1
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 34.5 · hand skill 37.5 · cramped spaces 15.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7 Hands-on, helping and caring for others

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.

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 65.7 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 44.3, while the average is 16.7. 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. 44.3

    Conducting interviews to arrange for preparation of obituary notices, to assist with the selection of caskets or urns, and to determine the location and time of burials or cremations.

    Low
  2. 33.1

    Making arrangements for, and conducting, funerals, cremations and burials

    Low
  3. 6.4

    Incising and closing incisions on various parts of the body and reshaping or reconstructing disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary

    Very Low
  4. 5.8

    Dressing bodies and placing them in caskets

    Very Low
  5. 5.5

    Embalming human bodies to retard or arrest the process of decay

    Very Low
  6. 5

    Conforming to health and sanitation and ensuring that legal requirements concerning embalming are met

    Very Low

6 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, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
47
AI does it for you
34

Helping wins by 13 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 4513

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.2. This one is above that.