Cooks, Restaurant vs Food Preparation Workers
Cooks, Restaurant carries the higher exposed share at 12.0% against 6.7%, a gap of 5.3 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.
| Occupation | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Capability | Friction | Median pay | Rank | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooks, Restaurant | 12.0% | 6.6% | 81.4% | 0.19 | 0.41 | $37,390 | 754 | untouched |
| Food Preparation Workers | 6.7% | 3.8% | 89.5% | 0.10 | 0.34 | $35,320 | 853 | untouched |
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.
Food Preparation Workers: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.10 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.