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Craft and related trades workers · code 7544

Fumigators and other pest and weed controllers

Fumigators and other pest and weed controllers use chemicals to remove harmful insects, small animals, wild plants and other unwanted organisms, to prevent damage to crops and to buildings and other structures and their surroundings, and to prevent health risks. Tasks include - (a) operating and monitoring equipment for spraying pests and weeds; (b) mixing chemicals according to instructions; (c) covering areas to specified depths with pesticides, applying knowledge of weather conditions, droplet sizes, elevation-to-distance ratios, and obstructions; (d) spraying or releasing chemical solutions or toxic gases, and setting traps to kill pests and vermin, such as mice, termites and roaches; (e) lifting, pushing and swinging nozzles, hoses and tubes in order to direct spray over designated areas; (f) filling sprayer tanks with water and chemicals; (g) cleaning and servicing machinery to ensure operating efficiency. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Fumigator - Pest controller - Weed controller Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Aerial crop sprayer - 3153

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 52 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • pest management worker

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

86.7
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 13.3 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 13.3 = 86.7

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

66.6
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs

42.4
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 41.7 · hand skill 42.3 · cramped spaces 43.1 · 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 66.6 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 16.5, while the average is 13.3. 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. 16.5

    Mixing chemicals according to instructions

    Very Low
  2. 16.3

    Filling sprayer tanks with water and chemicals

    Very Low
  3. 15.8

    Operating and monitoring equipment for spraying pests and weeds

    Very Low
  4. 14.5

    Cleaning and servicing machinery to ensure operating efficiency.

    Very Low
  5. 14

    Covering areas to specified depths with pesticides, applying knowledge of weather conditions, droplet sizes, elevation-to-distance ratios, and obstructions

    Very Low
  6. 9.3

    Lifting, pushing and swinging nozzles, hoses and tubes in order to direct spray over designated areas

    Very Low
  7. 7

    Spraying or releasing chemical solutions or toxic gases and setting traps to kill pests and vermin, such as mice, termites and roaches

    Very Low

7 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

Compared with similar jobs

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