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Craft and related trades workers · code 7113

Stonemasons, stone cutters, splitters and carvers

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

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 16 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • stonemason

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

89.1
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 10.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 10.9 = 89.1

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

79.3
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

42.9
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 41.1 · hand skill 47.3 · cramped spaces 40.2 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+ Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

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.

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 79.3 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 14, while the average is 10.9. 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. 14

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

    Very Low
  2. 13.5

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

    Very Low
  3. 11.6

    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. 10.5

    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 0.7-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
49
AI does it for you
17

Helping wins by 32 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3311

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.4. This one is above that.