Every task a job is made of.
A job is not one thing that survives or does not. It is a list of activities, and they are being affected at wildly different rates. These are the 2,083 detailed work activities the US Department of Labor uses to describe the whole economy, grouped by the kind of work they ask of you.
Recording, documentation and administration
This is the most automatable shape of work there is, and also the shape that most needs a live connection to the system the record lives in. Without that connection an agent can prepare the entry but cannot file it.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Record operational or production data | 91 |
| Record patient medical histories | 57 |
| Maintain student records | 53 |
| Write grant proposals | 49 |
| Maintain operational records | 46 |
| Develop instructional materials | 44 |
| Write articles, books or other original materials in area of expertise | 43 |
| Prepare scientific or technical reports or presentations | 42 |
| Prepare financial documents, reports, or budgets | 37 |
| Perform student enrollment or registration activities | 37 |
Drafting and content production
Producing the draft is the single thing current models are best at, and it needs no integration at all: a prompt and a couple of reference documents are enough. A person still edits it and takes responsibility for what goes out.
Research and retrieval work
An agent can find, read and summarise the sources this work depends on, and it can cover far more of them than a person would ever open. What it does not do is decide which sources deserve trust, or what the findings mean for your situation.
Analysis and evaluation work
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
Work done in software
Work that already happens inside a computer is the easiest to hand over, because the agent and the worker are operating in the same place. The constraint is permissions rather than capability: the agent needs its own scoped access, not a borrowed password.
Scheduling, planning and resource control
An agent can propose the plan, chase the replies and keep the record current. To actually change anything it needs write access to a calendar or work system, and a person still owns the tradeoffs when two plans collide.
Routine communication and explanation
Software drafts well and sends at volume, and vertical support agents now resolve a large share of inbound questions end to end. What does not transfer is the relationship, and the judgment about when a message should not be sent at all.
Selling and influencing
The research, the list building and the first draft of the pitch are already automated across most sales teams. Closing is not. Buyers still want a person to be answerable, and volume without judgment mostly produces noise.
Judgment, authorisation and strategy
Software can assemble the case and recommend an answer, and that is genuinely useful. The decision stays with a person because someone has to be accountable for it. Treating the recommendation as the decision is how automation projects fail.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Evaluate student work | 55 |
| Administer tests to assess educational needs or progress | 53 |
| Prepare tests | 48 |
| Select educational materials or equipment | 39 |
| Evaluate effectiveness of educational programs | 38 |
| Evaluate employee performance | 34 |
| Develop organizational policies or programs | 31 |
| Implement organizational process or policy changes | 29 |
| Diagnose medical conditions | 28 |
| Develop operating strategies, plans, or procedures | 27 |
Managing, training and developing people
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Serve on institutional or departmental committees | 58 |
| Supervise employees | 57 |
| Train medical providers | 49 |
| Supervise student research or internship work | 43 |
| Direct department activities | 36 |
| Guide class discussions | 35 |
| Supervise patient care personnel | 35 |
| Conduct employee training programs | 30 |
| Hire personnel | 27 |
| Prepare operational budgets | 26 |
Relationships, negotiation and public-facing presence
This work is the relationship itself. An agent can prepare for it and write up what happened afterwards, which is real time saved, but the encounter needs a person present and answerable.
Direct care and assistance
The documentation around care is highly automatable and that is where the time goes back. The care itself needs physical presence and someone accountable for the outcome, so this work stays where it is.
Physical, manual and inspection work
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
Method. Activities and the occupations that perform them come from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The grouping follows O*NET’s own 41 generalized work activities, so nothing here is sorted by keyword. The automatability band is our judgment, applied once per group rather than per activity, and stated as a three-way band because a precise percentage would be invented.