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Elementary occupations · code 9520

Street vendors (excluding food)

A phone can take the payment. Selling on the street is still about calling out and charm.

Taking payment is mostly out of AI's reach. Buying or making the goods, approaching customers and carrying stock it barely touches.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Street vendors (excluding food) sell a usually limited range of goods (excluding food for immediate consumption) in streets and public places such as stations, cinemas or theatres. Tasks include - (a) buying or receiving items for sale, or making simple items; (b) loading and unloading baskets, trays, pushcarts, bicycles, hand-trucks or other vehicles, to transport goods to the streets or public places such as stations or cinemas; (c) displaying goods or calling out to attract customers’ attention; (d) approaching potential customers on streets, or by going from house to house, to offer goods for sale; (e) receiving immediate payment. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Hawker - Newspaper vendor - Pedlar Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Market salesperson - 5211 - Street stall salesperson - 5211 - Street food vendor - 5212 - Door-to-door sales representative - 5243 - Free newspaper distributor - 9510 Notes Vendors from street and market stalls of fresh food products not intended for immediate consumption (such as fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products) are classified in Unit Group 5211: Stall and Market Salespersons. Vendors from street and market stalls of a variety of prepared meals and food items for immediate consumption are classified in Unit Group 5246: Food Service Counter Attendants. Vendors in streets and public places of food and beverages for immediate consumption from pushcarts, trucks, trays or baskets are classified in Unit Group 5212: Street Food Salespersons. Vendors in streets and public places of non-food items (or of pre-packaged non-perishable food items such as confectionery) from pushcarts, trucks, trays or baskets are classified in Unit Group 9520: Street Vendors (excluding food).

  • hawker

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

80 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

150 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 20.5 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 20.5 = 79.5.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

This job rates 25.7 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, but for work this far from the physical that matters less.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Street vendors (excluding food) 80

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Mobile payments.
  • Selling through messaging apps.
  • Checking prices.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Attracting customers on the street.
  • Choosing what to sell.
  • Moving goods from place to place.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Mobile money and digital wallets.
  • Selling online as well as on the street.
  • Licensing done through apps.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Medium

42 could do without you

It could take over some of the work, and help with more. It could help with 61 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Lower

26 how hands-on

Not much of this job needs hands, so the robot can sit this one out.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Less than half of this job is hands-on. Robots still matter, but for a smaller part of the work, so we don't sort it any further.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 9 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

26 How
hands-on
9 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Less than half hands-on

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, matched to one US job .

finger skill 10.7 · hand skill 3.6 · cramped spaces 11.5 · averaged · rule: hands-on under 50

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 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 36, against an average of 21. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 36

    Receiving immediate payment.

    Low
  2. 24

    Buying or receiving items for sale, or making simple items

    Very Low
  3. 21

    Displaying goods or calling out to attract customer’s attention

    Very Low
  4. 12

    Approaching potential customers on streets, or by going from house to house, to offer goods for sale

    Very Low
  5. 10

    Loading and unloading baskets, trays, push-carts, bicycles, hand-trucks or other vehicles, to transport goods to the streets or public places such as stations or cinemas

    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 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
61
AI does it for you
42

Sidekick wins, by 19 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches, but only partly: not everyone in it does this job. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 6217

So, should street vendors be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

No. Taking payment is the most exposed task, rated Low; buying stock, displaying goods and approaching customers rate Very Low. Mobile payments and online selling help, but street trading is face to face.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 33 jobs in the “Elementary occupations” family, averaging 85. This one is below the family average.

Pit this against any other job →