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Elementary occupations · code 9329

Manufacturing labourers not elsewhere classified

Manufacturing labourers not elsewhere classified assist the work of machine operators and assemblers and perform a variety of simple and routine manual tasks in manufacturing, excluding packing and labelling finished products. Tasks include - (a) conveying goods, material, equipment and other items to work areas, and removing finished pieces; (b) loading and unloading vehicles, trucks and trolleys; (c) clearing machine blockages, and cleaning machinery, equipment and tools; (d) carrying out manual sorting of products or components. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Bottle sorter - Factory hand - Material handler - Stacker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Electrical equipment assembler - 8212 - Electronic equipment assembler - 8212 - Leather products assembler - 8219 - Rubber products assembler - 8219 - Hand packer - 9321

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 33 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • wood caulker
  • factory hand

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

88
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 12 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 12 = 88

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

65.2
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 6 US jobs

38.1
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 43.1 · hand skill 44.2 · cramped spaces 26.8 · 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 65.2 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 14.3, while the average is 12. 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. 14.3

    Carrying out manual sorting of products or components.

    Very Low
  2. 12

    Clearing machine blockages, cleaning machinery, equipment and tools

    Very Low
  3. 11

    Conveying goods, material, equipment and other items to work areas, and removing finished pieces

    Very Low
  4. 10.8

    Loading and unloading vehicles, trucks and trolleys

    Very Low

4 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.

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

AI helps you
48.7
AI does it for you
23.5

Helping wins by 25.2 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 7411, 8391, 8392, 8394, 8399, 8995

Compared with similar jobs

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