The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
The whole measured labour market

Pay against exposure, one point per occupation

The common framing says AI arrives at the bottom of the labour market first. Plotted against what people are actually paid, that is not what this index shows. Hover any point for the figures, click it for the full breakdown of that job.

767
occupations with both a score and a published wage sourced
143.6M
US jobs covered, about 93% of national employment
+0.34
rank correlation between median pay and exposed share computed
23.9%
exposed share of the lowest paid fifth of employment, the lowest of the five pay bands

Loading the index from the public data endpoint.

exposed assisted untouched the heavy line is the employment weighted average across ten equal slices of employment by pay · the same figures as a table

What the chart shows

computed

The floor is held by hands, not by difficulty

The cluster at the bottom left is preparation, cleaning, serving and moving things. It scores low because every task in it needs a body in a room, and this index rates what a generally available system can produce, not what a robot might one day do.

The ceiling is held by a signature

The high paid work at the right is not beyond current capability. It is held back by accountability, presence and the cost of checking, which is close to a description of what a professional licence buys. That is the assisted band, and it is the best paid band in the index.

The middle is two economies at once

Around the median wage the chart splits vertically rather than clustering. Bookkeepers and secretaries sit near the top of the range, heavy truck drivers and construction labourers near the bottom. Any single figure for that band describes nobody in it.

Exposure is not displacement. A point high on this chart means current systems can produce that work with little structural obstacle, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, liability, procurement and inertia, none of which this index measures. The full argument is in exposure rises with pay, and the method is in the methodology.