Job Check
Brickmasons and Blockmasons
Lay and bind building materials, such as brick, structural tile, concrete block, cinder block, glass block, and terra-cotta block, with mortar and other substances, to construct or repair walls, partitions, arches, sewers, and other structures.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Measure distance from reference points and mark guidelines to lay out work, using plumb bobs and levels.Mostly human for now
- 02Construct corners by fastening in plumb position a corner pole or building a corner pyramid of bricks, and filling in between the corners using a line from corner to corner to guide each course, or layer, of brick.Mostly human for now
- 03Apply and smooth mortar or other mixture over work surface.Mostly human for now
- 04Calculate angles and courses and determine vertical and horizontal alignment of courses.Mostly human for now
- 05Break or cut bricks, tiles, or blocks to size, using trowel edge, hammer, or power saw.Mostly human for now
- 06Interpret blueprints and drawings to determine specifications and to calculate the materials required.AI could speed this up, with extra tools
- 07Remove excess mortar with trowels and hand tools, and finish mortar joints with jointing tools, for a sealed, uniform appearance.Mostly human for now
- 08Fasten or fuse brick or other building material to structure with wire clamps, anchor holes, torch, or cement.Mostly human for now
- 09Clean working surface to remove scale, dust, soot, or chips of brick and mortar, using broom, wire brush, or scraper.Mostly human for now
- 10Examine brickwork or structure to determine need for repair.Mostly human for now
Tasks from O*NET® 31.0 (US Department of Labor, CC BY 4.0, changed by us), most important first. “Already use” comes from Anthropic’s data on real work chats with Claude; “could speed up” from task ratings made with GPT-4 in 2023.
Four studies, side by side
None is a forecast of job lossToo little dataNot enough work use was seen to measure. This does not mean the job is safe from AI.Anthropic, 2026
4%of this job’s tasks an AI model could do in half the time, counting tasks that need extra tools as half (rated in 2023).Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin and Rock, 2023
Above 30% of jobsin how often and how well AI helped with this job’s work in Microsoft Copilot chats (2024 data).Microsoft Research (Tomlinson et al.), 2025
Above 97% of jobsin how much of this job’s physical work robots have been shown to do, from factories to homes (2026).Anthropic, 2026
Your human edge
The main tasks with no real AI use seen and no big speed-up expected. This is where your skill counts most today.
- Measure distance from reference points and mark guidelines to lay out work, using plumb bobs and levels.
- Construct corners by fastening in plumb position a corner pole or building a corner pyramid of bricks, and filling in between the corners using a line from corner to corner to guide each course, or layer, of brick.
- Apply and smooth mortar or other mixture over work surface.