Skip to content
man bot

Service and sales workers · code 5419

Protective services workers not elsewhere classified

This unit group covers protective services workers not classified elsewhere in Minor Group 541: Protective Services Workers. For instance, the unit group includes lifeguards, crossing guards and animal control officers. Tasks include - (a) patrolling beaches and swimming pools to prevent accidents and to rescue bathers from drowning; (b) monitoring traffic flow to locate safe gaps through which pedestrians can cross streets; (c) responding to citizen complaints concerning stray domestic animals, livestock and wildlife, issuing warnings and citations to owners and impounding lost, homeless and dangerous animals; (d) patrolling an assigned area to enforce parking regulations; (e) directing traffic. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Animal control officer - Beach patrolman/woman - Crossing guard - Game warden - Lifeguard - Traffic warden Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Doorkeeper - 5414 - Museum guard - 5414 - Watchman/woman - 5414

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 139 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • civil enforcement officer
  • crossing guard
  • aircraft marshaller
  • life guard
  • coastguard watch officer
  • street warden
  • emergency response worker

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

80.3
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 19.7 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 19.7 = 80.3

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

52.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 9 US jobs , so treat it as rough

29.3
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 30.4 · hand skill 31.4 · cramped spaces 26.1 · 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 52.4 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 24.1, while the average is 19.7. 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. 24.1

    Patrolling an assigned area to enforce parking regulations

    Very Low
  2. 21.5

    Responding to citizen complaints concerning stray domestic animals, livestock and wildlife, issuing warnings and citations to owners and impounding lost, homeless and dangerous animals

    Very Low
  3. 21.5

    Directing traffic.

    Very Low
  4. 21.3

    Monitoring traffic flow to locate safe gaps through which pedestrians can cross streets

    Very Low
  5. 10.3

    Patrolling beaches and swimming pools to prevent accidents and to rescue bathers from drowning

    Very Low

5 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.

6 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
57.7
AI does it for you
26.8

Helping wins by 30.9 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 2343, 4412, 4422, 4524, 5995, 8999

Compared with similar jobs

There are 39 jobs in the “Service and sales workers” group, averaging 74.3. This one is above that.