The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 11-9131.00 · Job Zone 2

AI exposure: Postmasters and Mail Superintendents

Plan, direct, or coordinate operational, administrative, management, and support services of a U.S. post office; or coordinate activities of workers engaged in postal and related work in assigned post office.

Reading this score

computed

44.5% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Postmasters and Mail Superintendents at the 80th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.8 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.

What holds the line here is context. Across this occupation's 13 tasks it averages 2.05 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work depends on knowledge the model cannot hold. Much of this job runs on things that were never written down: what this particular organisation does, what happened last week, what the person across the table actually meant. That context is the barrier, and it erodes as systems are given more access.

The most exposed thing this job does is Monitor employees' work schedules and attendance for payroll purposes, at 73.3%. The least is Negotiate labor disputes, at 5.0%. A gap of 68.3% 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 management occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 56 roles in the group is 41.2%, and only 11 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 13 tasks, 8 are currently banded exposed, 4 assisted and 1 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take systems being given deeper access to the organisation's own records and history, which is already happening. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.

Task by task

13 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Monitor employees' work schedules and attendance for payroll purposes.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.69exposed
Prepare employee work schedules.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.52exposed
Prepare and submit detailed and summary reports of post office activities to designated supervisors.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.32exposed
Inform the public of available services, and of postal laws and regulations.55.0%20.0%25.0%3.96exposed
Resolve customer complaints.50.0%25.0%25.0%4.55exposed
Issue and cash money orders.50.0%25.0%25.0%3.44exposed
Collect rents for post office boxes.50.0%25.0%25.0%3.37exposed
Confer with suppliers to obtain bids for proposed purchases and to requisition supplies, disbursing funds according to federal regulations.50.0%25.0%25.0%3.35exposed
Direct and coordinate operational, management, and supportive services of one or a number of postal facilities.25.0%25.0%50.0%4.49assisted
Organize and supervise activities, such as the processing of incoming and outgoing mail.23.3%26.7%50.0%4.65assisted
Hire and train employees, and evaluate their performance.23.3%35.0%41.7%4.43assisted
Select and train postmasters and managers of associate postal units.21.7%28.3%50.0%4.10assisted
Negotiate labor disputes.5.0%20.0%75.0%3.78untouched

Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.

Where the score comes from

judged

Every 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.

DimensionMeanScale
Capability2.790-4
Embodiment0.410-3
Presence1.310-3
Accountability1.090-3
Context2.050-3
Verification cost1.370-3

What this means in practice

Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.

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.