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Craft and related trades workers · code 7314

Potters and related workers

Potters and related workers prepare pottery, porcelain ware, sanitary ware, bricks, tiles and abrasive wheels by hand or by machine. Tasks include - (a) making articles of pottery and porcelain; (b) making clay or plaster-of-paris moulds; (c) reading technical drawings to know customer’s requirements; (d) forming articles on the potter’s wheel by pressing thumbs into centres of revolving clay to form hollows, and pressing on the inside and outside of emerging clay cylinders with hands and fingers, gradually raising and shaping clay to desired forms and sizes; (e) adjusting wheel speeds according to the feel of the clay as pieces enlarge and walls become thinner; (f) operating jigger machines to form ceramic ware such as bowls, cups, plates and saucers; (g) adjusting and setting controls of pug mills that mix, extrude, cut, and deposit clay charges in or over moulds as specified; (h) smoothening surfaces of finished pieces, using rubber scrapers and wet sponges; (i) forming abrasive wheels by moulding and pressing an abrasive mixture by hand or by machine; (j) examining finished ware for defects and verifying accuracy of shapes and sizes of objects, using callipers and templates; (k) preparing work for sale or exhibition, and maintaining relationships with retail, pottery, art and resource networks that can facilitate sale or exhibition of work. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Abrasive wheel moulder - Brick and tile moulder - Potter - Pottery and porcelain caster - Pottery and porcelain modeller Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Ceramic artist - 2651 - Kiln operator (brick and tile) - 8181 - Kiln operator (pottery and porcelain) - 8181

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 113 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • hand brick moulder
  • production potter

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

82.2
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 17.8 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 17.8 = 82.2

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

59.7
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 5 US jobs

39.4
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 54.4 · hand skill 50 · cramped spaces 13.7 · 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 59.7 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 33.5, while the average is 17.8. 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. 33.5

    Reading technical drawings to know customer’s requirements

    Low
  2. 26.3

    Preparing work for sale or exhibition, and maintaining relationships with retail, pottery, art and resource networks that can facilitate sale or exhibition of work.

    Low
  3. 24

    Adjusting and setting controls of pug mill that mix, extrudes, cuts, and deposits clay charges in or over moulds as specified

    Very Low
  4. 19

    Examining finished ware for defects verifying accuracy of shapes and sizes of objects, using callipers and templates

    Very Low
  5. 15

    Adjusting wheel speeds according to the feel of the clay as pieces enlarge and walls become thinner

    Very Low
  6. 15

    Forming abrasive wheels by moulding and pressing an abrasive mixture by hand or by machine

    Very Low
  7. 14.8

    Operating jigger machines to form ceramic ware, such as bowls, cups, plates and saucers

    Very Low
  8. 13

    Making clay or plaster-of-Paris moulds

    Very Low
  9. 13

    Forming articles on potter's wheel by pressing thumbs into centres of revolving clay to form hollows, and press on the inside and outside of emerging clay cylinders with hands and fingers, gradually raising and shaping clay to desired forms and sizes

    Very Low
  10. 12.3

    Making articles of pottery and porcelain

    Very Low
  11. 10

    Smoothening surfaces of finished pieces, using rubber scrapers and wet sponges

    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 0.7-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
57
AI does it for you
16

Helping wins by 41 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 2114

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.5. This one is below that.