Job Check
Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
Use hand-welding, flame-cutting, hand-soldering, or brazing equipment to weld or join metal components or to fill holes, indentations, or seams of fabricated metal products.
10 main tasks · most important first
Your main tasks and AI
Importance- 01Operate safety equipment and use safe work habits.Mostly human for now
- 02Examine workpieces for defects and measure workpieces with straightedges or templates to ensure conformance with specifications.Mostly human for now
- 03Weld components in flat, vertical, or overhead positions.Mostly human for now
- 04Detect faulty operation of equipment or defective materials and notify supervisors.Mostly human for now
- 05Recognize, set up, and operate hand and power tools common to the welding trade, such as shielded metal arc and gas metal arc welding equipment.Mostly human for now
- 06Select and install torches, torch tips, filler rods, and flux, according to welding chart specifications or types and thicknesses of metals.Mostly human for now
- 07Mark or tag material with proper job number, piece marks, and other identifying marks as required.Mostly human for now
- 08Determine required equipment and welding methods, applying knowledge of metallurgy, geometry, and welding techniques.AI could speed this up a lot
- 09Prepare all material surfaces to be welded, ensuring that there is no loose or thick scale, slag, rust, moisture, grease, or other foreign matter.Mostly human for now
- 10Align and clamp workpieces together, using rules, squares, or hand tools, or position items in fixtures, jigs, or vises.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
9%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 20% 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 85% 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.
- Operate safety equipment and use safe work habits.
- Examine workpieces for defects and measure workpieces with straightedges or templates to ensure conformance with specifications.
- Weld components in flat, vertical, or overhead positions.