Skip to content
man bot

Craft and related trades workers · code 7533

Sewing, embroidery and related workers

Sewing, embroidery and related workers sew together, repair, renovate and decorate garments, gloves and other products of textile, fur, light leather and other materials and fabricate tents, sails, awnings and tarpaulins. They work mainly by hand, using a needle and thread, but may perform some tasks using a sewing machine. Tasks include - (a) repairing defective or damaged portions of cloths or garments by hand, using matching thread and needle; (b) removing stitches from garments to be altered, using rippers or razor blades; (c) selecting thread according to specifications or colour of parts, or dyeing thread to match colour and shade of cloth to be darned; (d) patching holes, sewing tears and ripped seams, or darning defects in items, using needle and thread; (e) pulling knots to the wrong sides of garments, using hooks; (f) trimming ends with scissors to make mended portions look uniform with the pattern of cloth; (g) sewing ornamental designs by hand over stamped, printed or stencilled patterns on fabric, using needle and coloured thread; (h) embroidering ornamental designs on cloth by hand or machine, using needle and coloured thread; (i) softening leather or shoe material with water to prepare it for sewing; (j) sewing or gluing decorative trimmings to articles such as hats, caps or other millinery; (k) hand-sewing umbrella covers to frames, tacking cover to ribs along seams, sewing corners to tips of ribs and sewing ties to outside of cover to hold umbrella when folded; (l) fabricating and assembling thick cloth, canvas and similar materials into sails, awning, tarpaulins and tents. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Embroiderer - Sewer - Umbrella maker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Textiles handicraft worker - 7318 - Dressmaker - 7531 - Sewing machine operator - 8153

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 35 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • embroiderer
  • doll maker
  • sewing machinist
  • made-up textile articles manufacturer
  • glove maker

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

87.8
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 12.2 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 12.2 = 87.8

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, averaged across 3 US jobs

40.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 49.4 · hand skill 48.2 · cramped spaces 24.5 · 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 14.1, while the average is 12.2. 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. 14.1

    Embroidering ornamental designs on cloth by hand or machine using needle and coloured threads

    Very Low
  2. 13.5

    Selecting thread according to specifications or colour of parts or dyeing thread to match colour and shade of cloth to be darned

    Very Low
  3. 13.5

    Trimming ends with scissors to make mended portion look uniform with pattern of cloth

    Very Low
  4. 13.5

    Sewing ornamental designs by hand over stamped, printed or stencilled patterns on fabric using needle and coloured thread

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Sewing or gluing decorative trimmings to articles, such as hats, caps or millinery

    Very Low
  6. 13.5

    Hand-sewing umbrella covers to frames, tacking cover to ribs along seams, sewing corners to tip of rib and sewing ties to outside of cover to hold umbrella when folded

    Very Low
  7. 12.8

    Pulling knots to the wrong sides of garments, using hooks

    Very Low
  8. 12

    Fabricating and assembling thick cloth, canvas and similar materials into sails, awning, tarpaulins and tents.

    Very Low
  9. 11.5

    Softening leather or shoe material with water to prepare it for sewing

    Very Low
  10. 10

    Removing stitches from garments to be altered, using rippers or razor blades

    Very Low
  11. 9.8

    Repairing defective or damaged portion of cloth or garment by hand, using matching thread and needle

    Very Low
  12. 8.5

    Patching holes, sewing tears and ripped seams, or darning defects in items, using needles and thread

    Very Low

12 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
63
AI does it for you
23

Helping wins by 40 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 3931

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.4. This one is above that.