AI exposure: Upholsterers
Make, repair, or replace upholstery for household furniture or transportation vehicles.
Reading this score
computedAt 11.8% of weighted task load, Upholsterers sits at the 18th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 83.6% 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 22 tasks it averages 2.45 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 Maintain records of time required to perform each job, at 73.3%. The least is Make, repair, or replace automobile upholstery and convertible and vinyl tops, 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 less exposed than the median of 16.2% across the group's 107 roles, with 70 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 22 tasks, 5 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 17 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 | 0.80 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.45 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.14 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.18 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.09 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.70 | 0-3 |
Task by task
22 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maintain records of time required to perform each job. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 4.08 | exposed |
| Design upholstery cover patterns and cutting plans, based on sketches, customer descriptions, or blueprints. | 60.0% | 15.0% | 25.0% | 4.09 | exposed |
| Collaborate with interior designers to decorate rooms and coordinate furnishing fabrics. | 60.0% | 15.0% | 25.0% | 3.75 | exposed |
| Discuss upholstery fabrics, colors, and styles with customers, and provide cost estimates. | 58.3% | 29.2% | 12.5% | 4.02 | exposed |
| Read work orders, and apply knowledge and experience with materials to determine types and amounts of materials required to cover workpieces. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.35 | exposed |
| Examine furniture frames, upholstery, springs, and webbing to locate defects. | 10.0% | 15.0% | 75.0% | 4.20 | untouched |
| Fit, install, and secure material on frames, using hand tools, power tools, glue, cement, or staples. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.51 | untouched |
| Measure and cut new covering materials, using patterns and measuring and cutting instruments, following sketches and design specifications. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.49 | untouched |
| Build furniture up with loose fiber stuffing, cotton, felt, or foam padding to form smooth, rounded surfaces. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.45 | untouched |
| Make, restore, or create custom upholstered furniture, using hand tools and knowledge of fabrics and upholstery methods. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.36 | untouched |
| Adjust or replace webbing, padding, or springs, and secure them in place. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.19 | untouched |
| Sew rips or tears in material, or create tufting, using needles and thread. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.10 | untouched |
| Remove covering, webbing, padding, or defective springs from workpieces, using hand tools such as hammers and tack pullers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.06 | untouched |
| Attach fasteners, grommets, buttons, buckles, ornamental trim, and other accessories to covers or frames, using hand tools. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.05 | untouched |
| Repair furniture frames and refinish exposed wood. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.85 | untouched |
| Interweave and fasten strips of webbing to the backs and undersides of furniture, using small hand tools and fasteners. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.82 | untouched |
| Draw cutting lines on material following patterns, templates, sketches, or blueprints, using chalk, pencils, paint, or other methods. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.27 | untouched |
| Stretch webbing and fabric, using webbing stretchers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Operate sewing machines or sew upholstery by hand to seam cushions and join various sections of covering material. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.21 | untouched |
| Pick up and deliver furniture. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.95 | untouched |
| Attach bindings or apply solutions to edges of cut material to prevent raveling. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.84 | untouched |
| Make, repair, or replace automobile upholstery and convertible and vinyl tops, using knowledge of fabric and upholstery methods. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 2.99 | untouched |
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.