Craft and related trades workers · code 7313

Jewellery and precious-metal workers

AI can design a ring. Setting the stone so it never falls out is still bench work.

Inspecting finished pieces and examining gems under a loupe are mostly out of AI's reach. It barely touches nine of the eleven tasks, including casting jewellery by hand.

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

Jewellery and precious metal workers design, fabricate, adjust, repair or appraise jewellery, ceremonial or religious items, gold, silver, other precious metals or gems. They cut, file, polish and set precious and semi-precious stones including gems and diamonds, and engrave designs on jewellery and precious metal articles. They cut and polish diamonds for industrial purposes. Tasks include - (a) casting jewellery and other non-ferrous metal articles by hand; (b) creating new jewellery designs and modifying existing designs, using computers as necessary; (c) cutting designs in moulds or other materials to be used as models in the fabrication of metal and jewellery products; (d) altering existing jewellery mountings in order to reposition jewels or to adjust mountings; (e) repairing, reshaping and restyling old jewellery or precious metal ware following designs or instructions; (f) making complete jewellery articles such as rings, necklaces, bangles, brooches and bracelets from materials such as gold, silver, platinum and precious or semi-precious stones; (g) examining gem surfaces and internal structures, using polariscopes, refractometers, microscopes and other optical instruments to differentiate between stones, to identify rare specimens, or to detect flaws, defects or peculiarities affecting gem values; (h) cutting and polishing gems and setting them in jewellery articles; (i) engraving or embossing letters, designs or decorative lines on jewellery and precious metal ware; (j) grinding, drilling and finishing jewel bearings for use in precision instruments such as compasses and chronometers; (k) examining assembled or finished products to ensure conformity with specifications, using magnifying glasses or precision measuring instruments. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Enameller (jewellery) - Gem setter - Goldsmith - Jeweller - Silversmith

jeweller
precious stone cutter

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

82 / 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

110 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 11 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 17.6 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 17.6 = 82.4.

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.

This job rates 40.6 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Jewellery and precious-metal workers 82

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.

CAD designs and 3D-printed wax models.
Gem examination with imaging tools.
Quotes and customer designs.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Setting stones and finishing by hand.
Repairing and restyling old pieces.
Engraving and fine detail.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

Customers designing pieces online with a jeweller.
Lab-grown stones and provenance records.
Repair and remodelling of heirlooms.

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

19 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 58 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Some

41 how hands-on

A fair part of this job is hands-on, so robots would be needed for that part, not just software.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 37 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

41 How
hands-on

37 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

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 59.8 · hand skill 43.8 · cramped spaces 7.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

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 29, against an average of 18. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

28
Examining assembled or finished products to ensure conformance to specifications, using magnifying glasses or precision measuring instruments.

Low
25
Examining gem surfaces and internal structures, using polariscopes, refractometers, microscopes, and other optical instruments to differentiate between stones, to identify rare specimens, or to detect flaws, defects or peculiarities affecting gem values

Low
23
Creating new jewellery designs and modifying existing designs, using computers as necessary

Very Low
17
Altering existing jewellery mountings in order to reposition jewels or to adjust mountings

Very Low
15
Cutting designs in moulds or other materials to be used as models in the fabrication of metal and jewellery products

Very Low
15
Engraving or embossing letters, designs or decorative lines on jewellery and precious metal ware

Very Low
15
Making complete jewellery articles such as rings, necklaces, bangles, brooches and bracelets from materials such as gold, silver, platinum and precious or semi-precious stones

Very Low
15
Repairing, reshaping and restyling old jewellery or precious metal ware following designs or instructions

Very Low
14
Cutting and polishing gems and setting them in jewellery articles

Very Low
14
Casting jewellery and other non-ferrous metal articles by hand

Very Low
13
Grinding, drilling and finishing jewel bearings for use in precision instruments such as compasses and chronometers

Very Low

11 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: 58
AI does it for you: 19

Sidekick wins, by 39 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 3994

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up under 0.01% of all the conversations: a tiny slice. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 2 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should jewellers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. The most exposed tasks are inspecting finished pieces and examining gems, both Low; making, setting and repairing jewellery rate Very Low. CAD design and 3D-printed wax models already help; the making and finishing stay a craft.

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 84. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →