The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Occupation · SOC 51-2092.00 · Job Zone 2

AI exposure: Team Assemblers

Work as part of a team having responsibility for assembling an entire product or component of a product. Team assemblers can perform all tasks conducted by the team in the assembly process and rotate through all or most of them, rather than being assigned to a specific task on a permanent basis. May participate in making management decisions affecting the work. Includes team leaders who work as part of the team.

Reading this score

computed

At 21.4% of weighted task load, Team Assemblers sits at the 39th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 66.8% 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 11 tasks it averages 2.27 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 Complete production reports to communicate team production level to management, at 73.3%. The least is Package finished products and prepare them for shipment, at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% 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 production occupations, this one is more exposed than most. The median across the 107 roles in the group is 16.1%, and only 22 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 11 tasks, 3 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 8 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

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
Capability1.320-4
Embodiment2.270-3
Presence0.450-3
Accountability0.730-3
Context1.230-3
Verification cost0.910-3

Task by task

11 tasks, O*NET 31.0
TaskExposedAssistedUntouchedImportanceBand
Complete production reports to communicate team production level to management.73.3%26.7%0.0%4.08exposed
Review work orders and blueprints to ensure work is performed according to specifications.55.0%20.0%25.0%4.43exposed
Determine work assignments and procedures.55.0%20.0%25.0%4.04exposed
Supervise assemblers and train employees on job procedures.13.8%23.8%62.5%3.94untouched
Operate machinery and heavy equipment, such as forklifts.13.3%11.7%75.0%3.32untouched
Perform quality checks on products and parts.11.7%13.3%75.0%4.62untouched
Maintain production equipment and machinery.11.7%13.3%75.0%4.17untouched
Rotate through all the tasks required in a particular production process.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.15untouched
Shovel, sweep, or otherwise clean work areas.0.0%0.0%100.0%3.74untouched
Provide assistance in the production of wiring assemblies.0.0%0.0%100.0%4.24untouched
Package finished products and prepare them for shipment.0.0%0.0%100.0%3.93untouched

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

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.