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Craft and related trades workers · code 7211

Metal moulders and coremakers

Metal moulders and coremakers make moulds and cores for casting metal. Tasks include - (a) making moulds by hand or using auxiliary machines on a bench for small metal castings, on the foundry floor, or in a pit for large castings; (b) making cores for use in metal moulds; (c) cleaning and smoothing moulds, core boxes, and repairing surface imperfections; (d) moving and positioning work pieces such as mould sections, patterns and bottom boards, using cranes, or signalling others to move work pieces; (e) positioning patterns inside mould sections and clamping sections together; (f) cutting spouts, runner holes and sprue holes into moulds; (g) lifting upper mould sections from lower sections and remove moulded patterns. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Coremaker - Metal casting moulder

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 53 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • foundry operative

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

86.6
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 13.4 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 13.4 = 86.6

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

70.6
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

40.4
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 43.8 · hand skill 47.3 · cramped spaces 30.2 · 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 70.6 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 14.6, while the average is 13.4. 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. 14.6

    Making cores for use in metal moulds

    Very Low
  2. 14.5

    Making moulds by hand or using auxiliary machines on a bench for small metal castings, on the foundry floor, or in a pit for large castings

    Very Low
  3. 14

    Positioning patterns inside mould sections and clamping sections together

    Very Low
  4. 13.5

    Cleaning and smoothing moulds, core boxes, and repairing surface imperfections

    Very Low
  5. 12.5

    Moving and positioning work pieces such as mould sections, patterns, and bottom boards, using cranes, or signalling others to move work pieces

    Very Low
  6. 12.5

    Lifting upper mould sections from lower sections and remove moulded patterns.

    Very Low
  7. 12

    Cutting spouts, runner holes and sprue holes into moulds

    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
52
AI does it for you
18

Helping wins by 34 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3221

Compared with similar jobs

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