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Craft and related trades workers · code 7536

Shoemakers and related workers

Shoemakers and related workers make, modify and repair standard, custom or orthopaedic footwear and natural or synthetic leather articles such as luggage, handbags and belts (except for leather garments, hats and gloves), or participate in the manufacture of shoes and related goods. They decorate, reinforce or finish shoes, luggage, handbags and belts. Tasks include - (a) making, modifying and repairing standard footwear to meet individual requirements; (b) making, modifying and repairing orthopaedic or therapeutic footwear according to doctors’ prescriptions, or modifying existing footwear for people with foot problems and special needs; (c) repairing belts, luggage, purses and similar products; (d) taking plaster casts of deformed legs or feet to prepare drawings; (e) preparing inserts, heel pads and lifts from casts of customers’ feet; (f) studying drawings and other specifications to make footwear according to customers’ needs; (g) studying work orders and/or shoe part tags to obtain information about workloads, specifications and the types of materials to be used; (h) checking the texture, colour and strength of leather to ensure that it is adequate for a particular purpose; (i) cutting out, shaping and padding parts for making leather articles; (j) sewing rips or patching holes to repair articles such as purses, belts, shoes and luggage; (k) removing and examining shoes, shoe parts and designs to verify conformity with specifications, such as proper embedding of stitches in channels; (l) attaching accessories or ornamentation to decorate or protect products; (m) making and repairing articles such as saddles and harnesses for animals, luggage, handbags, briefcases, leather bags, belts and other accessories. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Cobbler - Orthopaedic shoemaker - Saddler - Shoemaker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Furrier - 7531 - Hatter - 7531 - Shoe production machine operator - 8156

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 94 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • leather goods manual operator
  • shoemaker

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.

59.3
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

36.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 44.6 · hand skill 44.6 · cramped spaces 20.8 · 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 59.3 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 31.5, 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. 31.5

    Studying drawings and other specifications to make footwear according to customer’s needs

    Low
  2. 26.3

    Checking the texture, colour and strength of leather to ensure that it is adequate for a particular purpose

    Low
  3. 23

    Studying work orders and/or shoe part tags to obtain information about workloads, specifications and the types of materials to be used

    Very Low
  4. 16.8

    Attaching accessories or ornamentation to decorate or protect products

    Very Low
  5. 16.5

    Removing and examining shoes, shoe parts and designs to verify conformance to specifications such as proper embedding of stitches in channels

    Very Low
  6. 14.8

    Making, modifying and repairing standard footwear to meet individual requirements

    Very Low
  7. 14.8

    Making, modifying and repairing orthopaedic or therapeutic footwear according to doctors' prescriptions, or modifying existing footwear for people with foot problems and special needs

    Very Low
  8. 14.5

    Taking plaster casts of deformed legs or feet to prepare drawings

    Very Low
  9. 14.3

    Preparing inserts, heel pads and lifts from casts of customers' feet

    Very Low
  10. 12.3

    Cutting out, shaping and padding parts for making leather articles

    Very Low
  11. 12

    Repairing belts, luggage, purses and similar products

    Very Low
  12. 12

    Making and repairing articles such as saddles and harnesses for animals, luggage, handbags, brief-cases, leather bags, belts and other accessories.

    Very Low
  13. 11.3

    Sewing rips or patching holes to repair articles, such as purses, belts, shoes and luggage

    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 0.7-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 83.5. This one is below that.