Skip to content
man bot
Compare

Craft and related trades workers · code 7113

Stonemasons, stone cutters, splitters and carvers

AI can draw the lettering. Carving it into granite is still a craft.

AI barely touches any of the seven tasks, from grading and marking stone to splitting quarried blocks and setting monuments.

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

Stonemasons, stone cutters, splitters and carvers cut and shape hard and soft stone blocks and slabs for the construction and maintenance of stone structures and monumental masonry, and carve designs and figures in stone. Tasks include - (a) driving wedges into quarried stone to break it into slabs or blocks; (b) selecting and grading slabs and blocks of granite, marble and other stone; (c) cutting, shaping and finishing building and monumental stone such as granite or marble using hand tools or hand-held power tools; (d) making patterns and marking shapes on stone for subsequent sawing, planing, drilling and other dressing and cutting operations; (e) cutting and carving characters, figures or designs on stone blocks used for monuments or memorials; (f) setting stone in the erection of monuments and memorials; (g) repairing and replacing stonework on old buildings, churches and monuments. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Granite cutter - Stone carver - Stone cutter - Stone polisher (hand or hand-powered tools) Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Wall and floor tile setters - 7122 - Machine operator (stone cutting or processing) - 8112

  • stonemason

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

89 / 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

16 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 7 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 10.9 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 10.9 = 89.1.

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 79 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?

Stonemasons, stone cutters, splitters and carvers 89

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.

  • Designs and layouts for memorials.
  • Quotes and project records.
  • Machine-cut blanks from digital drawings.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Reading the grain and flaws in a stone.
  • Carving and restoring detail by hand.
  • Heritage repairs that have to match the original.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • 3D scanning old stonework before restoring it.
  • Programming and supervising computer-controlled stone cutting.
  • Heritage conservation projects that need traditional skills.

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

17 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 49 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

79 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

More fine handwork, and more time in cramped or awkward spots, than a typical hands-on job. That is exactly what machines find hardest: they do best in tidy, predictable places.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 43 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

79 How
hands-on
43 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

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, averaged across 2 US jobs .

finger skill 41.1 · hand skill 47.3 · cramped spaces 40.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+

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 14, against an average of 11. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 14

    Selecting and grading slabs and blocks of granite, marble, and other stone

    Very Low
  2. 14

    Making patterns and marking shapes on stone for subsequent sawing, planing, drilling and other dressing and cutting operations

    Very Low
  3. 12

    Cutting and carving characters, figures or designs on stone blocks used for monuments or memorials

    Very Low
  4. 11

    Cutting, shaping and finishing building and monumental stone such as granite or marble using hand tools or hand-held power tools

    Very Low
  5. 11

    Repairing and replacing stonework on old buildings, churches and monuments.

    Very Low
  6. 9

    Setting stone in the erection of monuments and memorials

    Very Low
  7. 7

    Driving wedges into quarried stone to break it into slabs or blocks

    Very Low

7 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
49
AI does it for you
17

Sidekick wins, by 32 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 3311

So, should stonemasons be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Every task rates Very Low, from selecting stone to carving memorials and repairing old buildings. Computer-controlled cutting already does some shaping, but restoration and hand carving need a mason.

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 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” family, averaging 83. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →