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Elementary occupations · code 9333

Freight handlers

Freight handlers carry out tasks such as packing, carrying, loading and unloading furniture and other household items, or loading and unloading ship and aircraft cargo and other freight, or carrying and stacking goods in various warehouses. Tasks include - (a) packing office or household furniture, machines, appliances and related goods to be transported from one place to another; (b) carrying goods to be loaded on or unloaded from vans, trucks, wagons, ships or aircraft; (c) loading and unloading grain, coal, sand, baggage and other items by placing them on conveyor belts, pipes and other conveyances; (d) connecting hoses between mainshore installation pipes and tanks of barges, tankers and other ships to load and unload petroleum, liquefied gases and other liquids; (e) carrying and stacking goods in warehouses and similar establishments; (f) sorting cargo prior to loading and unloading. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Baggage handler - Freight handler - Warehouse porter Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Crane operator - 8343 - Forklift operator - 8344 - Hotel porter - 9621 - Luggage porter - 9621

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 63 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • materials handler
  • mover
  • stevedore superintendent
  • rail intermodal equipment operator
  • stevedore
  • airport baggage handler
  • warehouse worker
  • distribution centre dispatcher

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

85.9
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 14.1 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 14.1 = 85.9

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

64.1
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 6 US jobs

42
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 40.8 · hand skill 42.4 · cramped spaces 42.8 · 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 64.1 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 14.1. 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

    Packing office or household furniture, machines, appliances and related goods to be transported from one place to another

    Very Low
  2. 16.3

    Carrying and stacking goods in warehouses and similar establishments

    Very Low
  3. 15

    Loading and unloading grain, coal, sand, baggage and other items by placing them on conveyor belts, pipes and other conveyances

    Very Low
  4. 13.8

    Sorting cargo prior to loading and unloading.

    Very Low
  5. 13.5

    Carrying goods to be loaded on or unloaded from vans, trucks, wagons, ships or aircraft

    Very Low
  6. 9.5

    Connecting hoses between main shore installation pipes and tanks of barges, tankers and other ships to load and unload petroleum, liquefied gases and other liquids

    Very Low

6 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
55.5
AI does it for you
30

Helping wins by 25.5 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 7129, 7219, 7411, 8911

Compared with similar jobs

There are 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” group, averaging 85. This one is above that.