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Craft and related trades workers · code 7512

Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers

Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers make various kinds of bread, cakes, and other flour products, as well as handmade chocolate and sugar confectionery. Tasks include - (a) making bread, cakes, biscuits, pastries, pies and other flour products; (b) making handmade confectionery from mixtures of sugar, chocolate and other ingredients, using hand tools and some machines; (c) combining measured ingredients in bowls of mixing, blending or cooking machinery; (d) checking the quality of raw materials to ensure that standards and specifications are met; (e) applying glazes, icings or other toppings to baked goods, using spatulas or brushes; (f) checking the cleanliness of equipment and operation of premises before production runs to ensure compliance with occupational health and safety regulations; (g) monitoring oven temperatures and product appearance to determine baking times; (h) coordinating the forming, loading, baking, unloading, de-panning and cooling of batches of bread, rolls, pastry and confectionery products. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Baker - Chocolate maker - Confectioner - Pastry-cook Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Cook - 5120 - Bakery products machine operator - 8160 - Bread production machine operator - 8160 - Chocolate production machine operator - 8160

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 93 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • pastry maker
  • pasta maker
  • confectioner
  • baker
  • chocolatier

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

83.1
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 16.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 16.9 = 83.1

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

53.8
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

36.1
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 41.1 · hand skill 42.9 · cramped spaces 24.3 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

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 53.8 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 35.3, while the average is 16.9. 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. 35.3

    Checking the quality of raw materials to ensure that standards and specifications are met

    Low
  2. 18.5

    Checking the cleanliness of equipment and operation of premises before production runs to ensure compliance with occupational health and safety regulations

    Very Low
  3. 16.5

    Making handmade confectionery from mixtures of sugar, chocolate and other ingredients using hand tools and some machines

    Very Low
  4. 14

    Making bread, cakes, biscuits, pastries, pies and other flour products

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Combining measured ingredients in bowls of mixing, blending or cooking machinery

    Very Low
  6. 13

    Coordinating the forming, loading, baking, unloading, de-panning and cooling of batches of bread, rolls, pastry and confectionary products.

    Very Low
  7. 12.5

    Monitoring oven temperatures and product appearance to determine baking times

    Very Low
  8. 12

    Applying glazes, icings or other toppings to baked goods, using spatulas or brushes

    Very Low

8 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.

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
54
AI does it for you
22

Helping wins by 32 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3511, 8311

Compared with similar jobs

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