AI exposure: Carpet Installers
Lay and install carpet from rolls or blocks on floors. Install padding and trim flooring materials.
Reading this score
computedAt 8.3% of weighted task load, Carpet Installers sits at the 11th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 84.3% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 17 tasks it averages 2.61 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Plan the layout of the carpet, allowing for expected traffic patterns and placing seams for..., at 35.0%. The least is Cut and bind material, at 0.0%. A gap of 35.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within construction and extraction occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 61 roles in the group is 5.0%, and only 17 of them score higher than this. Occupational families are not uniform, and the spread inside them is often wider than the gap between them.
What would move this score. Of 17 tasks, 1 are currently banded exposed, 1 assisted and 15 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.42 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.61 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.11 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.32 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.58 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.65 | 0-3 |
Task by task
17 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan the layout of the carpet, allowing for expected traffic patterns and placing seams for best appearance and longest wear. | 35.0% | 40.0% | 25.0% | 4.52 | assisted |
| Draw building diagrams and record dimensions. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 3.87 | exposed |
| Take measurements and study floor sketches to calculate the area to be carpeted and the amount of material needed. | 25.9% | 15.7% | 58.3% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Inspect the surface to be covered to determine its condition, and correct any imperfections that might show through carpet or cause carpet to wear unevenly. | 6.7% | 5.8% | 87.5% | 4.08 | untouched |
| Join edges of carpet and seam edges where necessary, by sewing or by using tape with glue and heated carpet iron. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.39 | untouched |
| Cut carpet padding to size and install padding, following prescribed method. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.28 | untouched |
| Cut and trim carpet to fit along wall edges, openings, and projections, finishing the edges with a wall trimmer. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Stretch carpet to align with walls and ensure a smooth surface, and press carpet in place over tack strips or use staples, tape, tacks or glue to hold carpet in place. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Roll out, measure, mark, and cut carpeting to size with a carpet knife, following floor sketches and allowing extra carpet for final fitting. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.21 | untouched |
| Nail tack strips around area to be carpeted or use old strips to attach edges of new carpet. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Install carpet on some floors using adhesive, following prescribed method. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.01 | untouched |
| Clean up before and after installation, including vacuuming carpet and discarding remnant pieces. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Cut and install vinyl composition tile or vinyl base. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.80 | untouched |
| Fasten metal treads across door openings or where carpet meets flooring to hold carpet in place. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.75 | untouched |
| Move furniture from area to be carpeted and remove old carpet and padding. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.63 | untouched |
| Measure, cut and install tackless strips along the baseboard or wall. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.85 | untouched |
| Cut and bind material. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.38 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean. 5 task(s) lacked a usable O*NET weight and are shown but excluded from the weighting.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.