The Number That Changes How You Read a Job Posting
A medical transcriptionist in Cincinnati checked her AI exposure score last month. Score: 10 out of 10. She thought the tool was broken. It wasn't. Her occupation has the highest AI displacement score in our database, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an 8% decline in that role over the next decade. That is not a coincidence.
She is not alone. Across 500+ occupations, we scored every job on a 0-10 scale of AI displacement risk. The results challenge almost every assumption people carry about which jobs are safe and which aren't.
This article explains exactly what the AI displacement score measures, how to read it, and what to do about your number. Not in theory. In practice.
What Most People Get Wrong About AI Exposure
The common assumption: manual labor is safe, knowledge work is doomed. Plumbers are fine. Lawyers are finished.
The data disagrees. Electricians score 1. Plumbers score 1. Physical therapists score 3. Meanwhile, radiologists score 7, paralegals score 8, and financial analysts score 8. The jobs that took the most education to enter are, in many cases, facing the most restructuring pressure. Not because AI is smarter than doctors. Because the specific tasks that fill a radiologist's day, reading scans, flagging anomalies, writing reports, are tasks AI performs well.
The education paradox
Bachelor's degree holders average 6.7 on the AI exposure score. Workers without a degree average 4.1. More education, more exposure.
This is the first thing the AI job risk score forces you to confront. Your degree is not a shield. In many cases, it puts you directly in the path of automation. The tasks AI handles first are pattern-matching, document processing, structured analysis. Those are the tasks white-collar professionals do all day.
But here's where it gets more nuanced. A high score does not mean your job disappears.
How to Read the 0-10 Scale
The AI displacement score runs from 0 to 10. Each band means something specific about timing and type of disruption. Not all high scores are equal.
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Score 0-3: Low exposure. Physical presence, dexterity, or real-time human judgment dominate the work. AI assists but does not replace. Nurses (2), electricians (1), surgeons (3).
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Score 4-6: Moderate exposure. Significant restructuring likely over 5+ years. The job survives, but the task mix shifts meaningfully. VP of Sales (6) falls here.
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Score 7-8: High exposure. Substantial role restructuring within 2-3 years. This is the largest group. Software developers (8-9), radiologists (7), paralegals (8). Jobs exist but look very different.
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Score 9-10: Disruption is happening now. Not in 5 years. Now. Only 3% of jobs score here, but medical transcription, basic data entry, and certain clerical roles are already contracting.
The global average across all 500+ occupations: 5.3 out of 10. Most workers sit in the moderate-to-high band. Not the cliff edge. Not safely below the waterline. Somewhere in the middle, with time to act.
A score of 8 doesn't mean your job is gone. It means the version of your job that exists today won't exist in three years. That is a very different problem with a very different solution.
The Cases That Prove the Point
Two data points that should make you stop and re-read them.
Software developers score 8-9 on the AI exposure score. Job outlook: plus 25% growth over the next decade. High score. Booming demand. That is the paradox of AI augmentation. The job isn't disappearing because of AI. It's growing because AI needs humans to direct it. But the humans doing that directing need to be different from the ones writing boilerplate CRUD apps today.
Now compare that to medical transcriptionists. Score: 10. Job outlook: minus 8%. That is the danger zone. Not just high exposure but declining demand. The score alone doesn't tell you everything. You have to cross-reference it with labor market trajectory.
The actual danger zone
Score 9-10 + declining job outlook is the combination that demands immediate action. Score alone is only half the picture.
Same pattern across healthcare. Surgeons score 3. Radiologists score 7. Same hospital, same building, completely different futures. The surgeon uses hands, judgment, and physical dexterity that AI cannot replicate today. The radiologist reads images, a task where AI performance now matches or exceeds human accuracy on many scan types.
And then there's the second-order effect nobody talks about.
A VP of Sales scores 6 on the AI job risk scale. Moderate. Fine, maybe. But the SDRs who report to them score 8. When the SDR role restructures, the VP's job restructures with it. You don't manage a team that no longer exists in its current form. Organizational dependency means your score is partially borrowed from the people below you.
What the Score Doesn't Capture
The AI displacement score measures occupational exposure at the task level. It tells you how much of the documented work in a given role is susceptible to AI performance. What it does not tell you is how fast your specific employer will deploy that AI, how much internal resistance slows adoption, or how well you personally adapt.
These variables matter enormously. But they are not scoreable in advance.
What the score does capture is the structural pressure on your role. And structural pressure accumulates whether you feel it or not. The 81% of physicians now using AI daily didn't all choose it enthusiastically. The tools arrived in their workflows, and adaptation became the condition of employment. That number was 38% in 2023. It moved 43 percentage points in under three years.
Adoption speed
Physicians using AI daily: 38% in 2023, 81% today. Structural change doesn't ask for your opinion before arriving.
Meanwhile, workers who add AI skills are commanding a 56% salary premium over peers in the same roles without them. The score tells you where the pressure is. The premium tells you where the opportunity sits. These two numbers together are more useful than either alone.
The score tells you where the pressure is. The 56% salary premium tells you where the opportunity sits. Use both.
What's your AI exposure score?
500+ occupations scored 0-10. Free. Takes 60 seconds.
Three Things to Do With Your Score Today
Knowing the number is the start. Acting on it is the job.
Audit your actual tasks, not your job title. List the five things you spend the most time doing each week. Search each one specifically. "Financial analyst" is a job title. "Building DCF models in Excel" is a task with a very different score. The task is what gets automated, not the title on your business card.
Cross-reference your score with growth data. A score of 8 with a plus-20% job growth trajectory is a very different situation from a score of 8 with a minus-5% outlook. Both are high exposure. One demands urgent action. The other demands skill repositioning. The distinction matters.
Track the score for roles one level above yours. If your manager's job is also high exposure, the organizational layer protecting you is thinner than you think. The VP-SDR dynamic plays out at every level. Look up, not just at your own position.
One data point that reframes all of this: 42% of Gen Z is now pursuing trades. Plumbers, HVAC technicians, electricians. Scores of 0-2. These students read the data and made a rational bet on physical presence and dexterity. The AI exposure score is already shaping career decisions for the next generation. It's worth knowing if it should shape yours.
Bottom Line
The AI displacement score is not a verdict. It's a measurement. What you do with it is entirely up to you, and entirely within your control, but only if you look at it honestly.
The full survival analysis across 500+ occupations covers specific task-level breakdowns, second-order role effects, and a 12-action repositioning framework. This article gives you the foundation. The rest requires going deeper.
Start with your number. Everything else follows from knowing where you actually stand.
The workers who will be fine aren't the ones who scored lowest. They're the ones who looked at their score and moved first.
Find out where you stand
500+ occupations scored 0-10 on AI displacement risk. Free.