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Craft and related trades workers · code 7513

Dairy-products makers

Dairy products makers process butter and various types of cheese, cream or other dairy products. Tasks include - (a) boiling or pasteurizing milk to achieve specified butter fat content; (b) separating cream from milk and churning cream into butter; (c) dumping measured amounts of starter and other ingredients into milk; (d) curdling milk, heating curd until it reaches desired firmness, draining curd and placing cheese into moulds to press it into shape; (e) salting cheese and piercing or smearing cheese with cultured wash to develop mould growth; (f) placing and turning cheese blocks on shelves to cure cheese; (g) monitoring product quality before packaging by inspecting, taking samples and adjusting treatment conditions when necessary; (h) recording amounts of ingredients used, test results and time cycles. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Butter maker - Cheese maker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Dairy products machine operator - 8160 - Milk processing machine operator - 8160

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 163 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • milk reception operator
  • dairy products maker

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

78.5
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 21.5 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 21.5 = 78.5

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

65.8
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

38.2
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 36.6 · hand skill 42 · cramped spaces 36 · 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 65.8 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 61, while the average is 21.5. 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. 61

    Recording amounts of ingredients used, test results, and time cycles.

    Medium
  2. 31

    Monitoring product quality before packaging by inspecting, taking samples and adjusting treatment conditions when necessary

    Low
  3. 14.5

    Boiling or pasteurizing milk to achieve specified butter fat content

    Very Low
  4. 14.5

    Curdling milk, heating curd until it reaches desired firmness, draining curd and placing cheese into moulds to press it into shape

    Very Low
  5. 14.3

    Dumping measured amounts of starter and other ingredients into milk

    Very Low
  6. 13.5

    Placing and turning cheese blocks on shelves to cure cheese

    Very Low
  7. 12.5

    Separating cream from milk and churning cream into butter

    Very Low
  8. 10.8

    Salting cheese and piercing or smearing cheese with cultured wash to develop mould growth

    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.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you
54
AI does it for you
21

Helping wins by 33 points.

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

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.6. This one is below that.