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Elementary occupations · code 9334

Shelf fillers

Shelf fillers stock shelves and display areas and keep stock clean and in order in supermarkets and other retail and wholesale shops. Tasks include - (a) placing goods neatly in bins and on racks, and stacking bulky goods on floors; (b) filling shelves with goods and ensuring that goods with the earliest use-by dates are at the front of shelves; (c) removing goods with past due use-by dates; (d) maintaining shelf order by removing stock belonging in a different location; (e) noting what has been sold and collecting goods needed from the stockroom; (f) obtaining articles for customers from shelf or stockroom; (g) directing customers to location of articles sought; (h) receiving, opening, unpacking and inspecting for damage merchandise from manufacturer or distributor. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Night filler - Stock filler - Stock handler

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 149 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • shelf filler

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

79.5
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 20.5 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 20.5 = 79.5

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

56.2
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, matched to one US job

33.5
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 34 · hand skill 41.1 · cramped spaces 25.5 · 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 56.2 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 43.5, while the average is 20.5. 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. 43.5

    Directing customers to location of articles sought

    Low
  2. 27

    Noting what has been sold and collecting goods needed from the stockroom

    Low
  3. 16.5

    Placing goods neatly in bins and on racks, and stacking bulky goods on floors

    Very Low
  4. 16.3

    Obtaining articles for customers from shelf or stockroom

    Very Low
  5. 15.3

    Maintaining shelf order by removing stock belonging in a different location

    Very Low
  6. 15.3

    Receiving, opening, unpacking, and inspecting for damage merchandise from manufacturer or distributor.

    Very Low
  7. 15

    Filling shelves with goods ensuring goods with the earliest use-by dates are at the front of shelves

    Very Low
  8. 15

    Removing goods with past due use-by dates

    Very Low

8 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.

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

AI helps you
47
AI does it for you
22

Helping wins by 25 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 8912

Compared with similar jobs

There are 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” group, averaging 85.2. This one is below that.