Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive vs Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive carries the higher exposed share at 53.8% against 51.2%, a gap of 2.6 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive | 53.8% | 17.8% | 28.4% | 0.72 | 0.28 | $47,540 | 77 | exposed |
| Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service | 51.2% | 17.6% | 31.2% | 0.69 | 0.30 | $38,630 | 103 | exposed |
What stands in the way, in each
Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive: the dominant friction is that it runs on knowledge of the organisation that a model cannot hold. Capability sits at 0.72 of 1 and friction at 0.28 of 1.
Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service: the dominant friction is that the work happens to physical things in physical places. Capability sits at 0.69 of 1 and friction at 0.30 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.