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Craft and related trades workers · code 7221

Blacksmiths, hammersmiths and forging press workers

Blacksmiths, hammersmiths and forging press workers hammer and forge bars, rods, ingots and plates of iron, steel or other metals, and draw wire to make and repair various kinds of tools, metal articles, pieces of equipment, and agricultural and related implements. Tasks include - (a) heating metal in forge furnaces and manufacturing and repairing articles by drawing, bending, cutting, hammering metal on an anvil, punching, shearing, joining and hardening or tempering; (b) shaping heated metal into forgings on power hammers equipped with open dies; (c) operating closed-die drop hammers to forge metal articles; (d) operating a power-press machine equipped with closed dies to forge metal articles; (e) drawing wire; (f) reading work orders or blueprints to determine specified tolerances and sequences of operations for machine setup; (g) measuring and inspecting machine parts to ensure conformity with product specifications. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Blacksmith - Drop hammer worker - Forging press worker - Hammersmith Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Casting machine operator - 7223 - Machine tool operator - 7223

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 89 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • drop forging hammer worker
  • hydraulic forging press worker
  • blacksmith
  • mechanical forging press worker

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

83.4
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 16.6 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 16.6 = 83.4

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

60.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

41
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 37.3 · 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 60.4 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 26, while the average is 16.6. 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. 26

    Measuring and inspecting machine parts to ensure conformance to product specifications.

    Low
  2. 20.1

    Reading work orders or blueprints to determine specified tolerances and sequences of operations for machine setup

    Very Low
  3. 15

    Shaping heated metal into forgings on power hammer equipped with open dies

    Very Low
  4. 15

    Operating closed-die drop hammer to forge metal articles

    Very Low
  5. 14.3

    Heating metal in forge furnace and manufacturing and repairing articles by drawing, bending, cutting, hammering metal on an anvil, punching, shearing, joining and hardening or tempering

    Very Low
  6. 13

    Drawing wire

    Very Low
  7. 12.5

    Operating a power-press machine equipped with closed dies to forge metal articles

    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, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

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 83.5. This one is below that.