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Elementary occupations · code 9312

Civil engineering labourers

Civil engineering labourers perform routine tasks in connection with the building and maintenance of roads, railways, dams and other civil engineering projects. Tasks include - (a) digging and filling holes and trenches using hand-held tools; (b) shovelling and spreading gravel and related materials; (c) trimming and cutting rocks and concrete and bitumen surfaces using jack-hammers; (d) loading and unloading construction materials, excavated material and equipment and transporting them around construction sites using wheelbarrows and hand trucks; (e) cleaning work sites and removing obstructions. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Construction labourer (civil engineering) - Earthmoving labourer - Maintenance labourer (dams)

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 8 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • civil engineering worker

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

90.7
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 9.3 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 9.3 = 90.7

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

73.4
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

40.3
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 42.9 · hand skill 43.8 · cramped spaces 34 · 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 73.4 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 13.3, while the average is 9.3. 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. 13.3

    Cleaning worksites and removing obstructions.

    Very Low
  2. 9.5

    Loading and unloading construction materials, excavated material and equipment and transporting them around construction sites using wheelbarrows and hand trucks

    Very Low
  3. 8.5

    Shovelling and spreading gravel and related materials

    Very Low
  4. 8

    Trimming and cutting rocks and concrete and bitumen surfaces using jack-hammers

    Very Low
  5. 7.3

    Digging and filling holes and trenches using hand held tools

    Very Low

5 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.

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

AI helps you
37.8
AI does it for you
14

Helping wins by 23.8 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 8211, 8215, 8216, 8219

Compared with similar jobs

There are 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” group, averaging 84.8. This one is above that.