The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Comparison

Cooks, Private Household vs Waiters and Waitresses

Cooks, Private Household carries the higher exposed share at 25.4% against 23.2%, a gap of 2.1 points. The difference is driven by both capability and friction: the two jobs differ in what a system can produce and in what stops it, by roughly the same amount. Release v2026.Q3.

OccupationExposedAssistedUntouchedCapabilityFrictionMedian payRankBand
Cooks, Private Household25.4%9.5%65.1%0.350.37$47,940488untouched
Waiters and Waitresses23.2%9.1%67.7%0.320.34$35,230522untouched

What stands in the way, in each

Cooks, Private Household: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.35 of 1 and friction at 0.37 of 1.

Waiters and Waitresses: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.32 of 1 and friction at 0.34 of 1.

Capability asks whether a generally available system can produce the work product at all. Friction asks what stops it finishing the job: physical work, being present, being accountable, unseen context, or the cost of checking the output. The rubric is here.

Read each in full

Exposure is not displacement. A higher score does not rank two jobs by how safe they are, and nothing here models adoption, employment or pay.