The Task Exposure Indexv2026.Q3
Comparison

Cooks, Restaurant vs Cooks, Short Order

Cooks, Restaurant carries the higher exposed share at 12.0% against 7.6%, a gap of 4.5 points. The difference is driven by capability: a current system can simply produce more of the first job's work product than the second's. Release v2026.Q3.

OccupationExposedAssistedUntouchedCapabilityFrictionMedian payRankBand
Cooks, Restaurant12.0%6.6%81.4%0.190.41$37,390754untouched
Cooks, Short Order7.6%4.4%88.1%0.120.43$35,880837untouched

What stands in the way, in each

Cooks, Restaurant: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.19 of 1 and friction at 0.41 of 1.

Cooks, Short Order: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.12 of 1 and friction at 0.43 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.