Craft and related trades workers · code 7535

Pelt dressers, tanners and fellmongers

AI can roughly grade a hide from a photo. Tanning it is still chemistry and hands.

AI barely touches any of the thirteen tasks, from scraping and trimming pelts to grading, dressing and dyeing leather.

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

Pelt dressers, tanners and fellmongers trim, scrape, clean, tan, buff and dye animal hides, pelts or skins to produce leather stock and finished furs for making garments and other products. Tasks include - (a) sorting and grading pelts, hides and skins according to colour, shading, size and density; (b) scraping particles of flesh, fat or protective tissue from skins or pelts to clean and soften them; (c) removing hair from skin or hides soaked in lime water; (d) preparing hides by curing them with salt; (e) removing long, coarse hair from pelts and trimming underlying hair to even length; (f) tanning and dressing pelts to improve lustre and beauty or to restore the natural appearance of pelts; (g) preparing bark and myrobalan liquor for treating hides or skins; (h) treating hides and skins in tanning solution to convert them into leather; (i) tinting or dyeing furs to enhance natural shades of fur; (j) removing wrinkles and setting grains on wet hides or skins; (k) dressing and applying dyes and stains to leather; (l) stretching and smoothing dressed pelts; (m) seasoning leather by applying chemical solution or oil evenly onto the surface by hand brush and allowing it to dry in open air. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Fellmonger - Pelt grader - Tanner Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Tanning machine operator - 8155

leather sorter

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

89 / 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

18 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 13 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 11 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 11 = 89.

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.

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

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 60 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Pelt dressers, tanners and fellmongers 89

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.

Grading and sorting from images.
Batch records and chemical tracking.
Orders and supply records.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

Judging a hide by look and feel.
Controlling dyeing and treatment by eye.
Handling chemicals and materials safely.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

Records showing where the leather came from.
Lower-impact tanning methods.
Automated quality inspection, with a person checking.

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

27 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 55 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

60 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

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.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 31 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

60 How
hands-on

31 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, less fiddly work

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, matched to one US job .

finger skill 39.3 · hand skill 44.6 · cramped spaces 8 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4

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 15, against an average of 11. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

15
Sorting and grading pelts, hides and skins according to colour, shading, size and density

Very Low
15
Dressing and applying dyes and stains to leather

Very Low
14
Seasoning leather by applying chemical solution or oil evenly on surface by hand brush and allowing it to dry in open air.

Very Low
13
Tinting or dyeing furs to enhance natural shades of fur

Very Low
13
Preparing bark and myrobalan liquor for treating hides or skins

Very Low
12
Removing wrinkles and setting grains on wet hide or skin

Very Low
11
Treating hides and skins in tanning solution to convert them into leather

Very Low
10
Tanning and dressing pelts to improve lustre and beauty or restore natural appearance of pelts

Very Low
10
Stretching and smoothing dressed pelts

Very Low
10
Preparing hides by curing them with salt

Very Low
7
Removing hair from skin or hides soaked in lime water

Very Low
7
Scraping particles of flesh, fat or protective tissue from skins or pelts to clean and soften them

Very Low
7
Removing long, coarse hair from pelts and trimming underlying hair to even length

Very Low

13 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: 55
AI does it for you: 27

Sidekick wins, by 28 points.

How good a match is this?

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

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 3999, 7117, 8399

So, should tanners and pelt dressers be worried?

Short answer: not really. Put the kettle on.

No. Every task rates Very Low, from sorting pelts to dyeing and stretching leather. AI may help with grading and quality checks, but the processes are physical and depend on judgement built up over years.

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 83. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →