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Craft and related trades workers · code 7131

Painters and related workers

Painters and related workers prepare surfaces of buildings and other structures for painting, apply protective and decorative coats of paint or similar materials, or cover interior walls and ceilings of buildings with wallpaper or other finishes. Tasks include - (a) cleaning and preparing walls and other surfaces of buildings for painting or wallpapering; (b) selecting and preparing paints to required colours by mixing pigments and additives; (c) applying or spraying paint, varnish and similar materials to surfaces, fixtures and fittings of buildings; (d) measuring and hanging wallpaper or other fabrics on interior walls and ceilings; (e) applying paints, varnishes and stains to surfaces using brushes, rollers and sprays. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Building painter - Paperhanger

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 40 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • construction painter
  • paperhanger

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

87.4
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 12.6 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 12.6 = 87.4

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

67.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

45.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 43.8 · hand skill 44.7 · cramped spaces 48.5 · 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 67.4 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 19, while the average is 12.6. 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. 19

    Selecting and preparing paints to required colours by mixing pigments and additives

    Very Low
  2. 12.8

    Applying or spraying paint, varnish, and similar materials to surfaces, fixtures and fittings of buildings

    Very Low
  3. 12.5

    Applying paints, varnishes and stains to surfaces using brushes, rollers and sprays.

    Very Low
  4. 9.8

    Measuring and hanging wallpaper or other fabrics on interior walls and ceilings

    Very Low
  5. 9

    Cleaning and preparing walls and other surfaces of buildings for painting or wallpapering

    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.

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

AI helps you
46
AI does it for you
13

Helping wins by 33 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3322

Compared with similar jobs

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