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Elementary occupations · code 9212

Livestock farm labourers

Livestock farm labourers perform simple and routine tasks in the farm production of animals, including poultry and insects. Tasks include - (a) digging and shovelling to clear ditches or for other purposes; (b) loading and unloading supplies, produce and other materials; (c) feeding, watering and cleaning animals and keeping their quarters clean; (d) monitoring livestock and reporting on their condition; (e) assisting with maintaining the health and welfare of livestock; (f) assisting with herding, droving and separating livestock for milking, shearing, transportation or slaughter, and between pastures; (g) collecting eggs and placing in incubators; (h) raking, pitching, stacking and storing hay, straw and other types of animal feed and bedding; (i) grading, sorting and packing produce into containers; (j) performing minor repairs on fixtures, buildings, equipment and fences. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Livestock farm labourer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Drover - 6121 - Shepherd - 6121 - Skilled farm worker (livestock) - 6121 - Firewood collector - 9624 - Water collector - 9624

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 31 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • groom
  • equine worker
  • livestock worker
  • catcher

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

88.1
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 11.9 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 11.9 = 88.1

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

68.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

34.9
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 44.6 · cramped spaces 17.3 · 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 68.4 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 15, while the average is 11.9. 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. 15

    Monitoring livestock and reporting on their condition

    Very Low
  2. 15

    Assisting with herding, droving and separating livestock for milking, shearing, transportation or slaughter and between pastures

    Very Low
  3. 14.9

    Grading, sorting, packing produce into containers

    Very Low
  4. 13.5

    Assisting with maintaining the health and welfare of livestock

    Very Low
  5. 12

    Performing minor repairs on fixtures, buildings, equipment and fences.

    Very Low
  6. 11.5

    Feeding, watering and cleaning animals and keeping their quarters clean

    Very Low
  7. 11

    Loading and unloading supplies, produce and other materials

    Very Low
  8. 9.5

    Collecting eggs and placing in incubators

    Very Low
  9. 9.5

    Raking, pitching, stacking and storing hay, straw and other types of animal feed and bedding

    Very Low
  10. 6.6

    Digging and shovelling to clear ditches or for other purposes

    Very Low

10 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 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” group, averaging 84.9. This one is above that.