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A closer look

Aged care worker

Software can keep the care notes. It can't help someone out of bed.

Helping clients wash, dress, eat and move AI barely touches. What it could take on is the admin around the care: booking appointments and keeping care records.

75 / 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: Minimal Exposure

5 of the 20 jobs up close

Why this score?

The ILO rated each task in this job for how much of it AI could do. They average 24.7 out of 100, so the job holds up at 100 − 24.7 = 75.3.

ILO group “Minimal Exposure”: A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't.

AI helps JSA 2025
47
Usually good news: more of the work gets quicker without the job going away.
AI takes over JSA 2025
21
This is what most people mean by “exposed”. We keep it apart from helping on purpose.
Hands-on O*NET 31.0
61.7
Software can't do hands-on work, but robots might one day. How far they've got isn't on this site, because nobody measures it well enough yet.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index O*NET 31.0 Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Aged care worker 75

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.

  • Care records, rostering and compliance documentation.
  • Monitoring and alerting.
  • Medication reminders and scheduling.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Physical care of another person's body, with dignity.
  • Noticing decline before it is measurable.
  • Being the person who turns up, which for some clients is the entire service.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Remote monitoring between visits.
  • Assistive lifting and mobility equipment.
  • Caseloads made possible, and demanded, by better scheduling.

Written by a human, from the task data. 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: Low

21 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 47 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

62 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

Physical work where helping and caring for people is a big part of the job. For care work, whether a machine could do the movements is only half the question. The other half is whether anyone wants one to. The US data counts helping workmates too, so a few trades end up here.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 33 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

33 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, helping and caring for others

The small print

It isn'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. This is the closest thing we have: how much fiddly handwork and cramped, awkward work the job takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

The numbers come straight from the US job database's entry for Personal Care Aides. Its wider group, Home-based personal care workers, lands in the same place.

finger skill 28.6 · hand skill 26.9 · cramped spaces 42 · hands-on 61.7 · caring 6.06 of 7 · rule: hands-on 50+ · caring 4+ of 7

from the source O*NET 31.0 data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.08% of all the conversations: a tiny slice, mostly the paperwork rather than the work. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

48
52

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should aged care workers be worried?

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

No. Washing, dressing, feeding and moving people all rate Very Low. AI helps with the records, rosters and reminders around the care. Lifting aids and remote monitoring will change parts of the day, but not the reason people need someone to turn up.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing. Bank tellers survived the cash machine. The job just got more chatty.

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 →

Fancy a rematch?

Put aged care workers up against another job, then send the result to someone who needs a little humbling.

Where this page's numbers come from