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Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers · code 6320

Subsistence livestock farmers

Subsistence livestock farmers breed, raise and tend livestock in order to provide food, shelter and, in some cases, a minimum of cash income for themselves and their households. Tasks include - (a) cultivating pastures, or managing grazing lands, and monitoring feed and water supplies needed to maintain condition of livestock; (b) monitoring and examining animals to detect illness, injury or disease, and to check physical condition; (c) grooming and marking animals and shearing coats to collect hair or wool; (d) herding or leading livestock to pastures, grazing land and water supplies; (e) raising, tending, feeding and milking animals or draining blood from them; (f) breeding animals and helping with animal births; (g) slaughtering and skinning animals and preparing them and their products for consumption or sale; (h) carrying out some processing of animal products; (i) building and maintaining houses and other shelters; (j) making tools, clothes and utensils for use by the household; (k) fetching water and gathering firewood; (l) buying, bartering and selling animals and some products. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Subsistence cattle farmer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Livestock farm labourer - 9212 - Mixed crop and livestock farm labourer - 9213 - Water and firewood collector - 9624 Notes Workers in a subsistence setting whose main tasks are fetching water and gathering firewood are classified in Unit Group 9624: Water and Firewood Collectors. Workers in subsistence agriculture who perform a limited range of simple and routine tasks, usually under the direction of others, are classified in the relevant unit group in Sub-major Group 92: Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Labourers.

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 42 of 427 for holding up against AI.

87.3
Holds up
against AI
Not Exposed

AI could take on 12.7 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 12.7 = 87.3

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

68.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

34.9
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 44.6 · cramped spaces 17.3 · 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 68.4 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 21.5, while the average is 12.7. 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. 21.5

    Buying, bartering and selling animals and some products.

    Very Low
  2. 17

    Monitoring and examining animals to detect illness, injury or disease, and to check physical condition

    Very Low
  3. 14

    Breeding animals and helping with animal births

    Very Low
  4. 13.5

    Cultivating pastures, or managing grazing lands, and monitoring feed and water supplies needed to maintain condition of livestock

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Herding or leading livestock to pastures, grazing land and water supplies

    Very Low
  6. 13.5

    Raising, tending, feeding and milking animals or draining blood from them

    Very Low
  7. 13.5

    Making tools, clothes and utensils for use by the household

    Very Low
  8. 11

    Slaughtering and skinning animals and preparing them and their products for consumption or sale

    Very Low
  9. 9.5

    Building and maintaining houses and other shelters

    Very Low
  10. 9.3

    Carrying out some processing of animal products

    Very Low
  11. 8.6

    Grooming and marking animals and shearing coats to collect hair or wool

    Very Low
  12. 7.5

    Fetching water and gathering firewood

    Very Low

12 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
41
AI does it for you
20

Helping wins by 21 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 8999

Compared with similar jobs

There are 18 jobs in the “Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers” group, averaging 83.4. This one is above that.