Rather than looking up your job title on a risk list, the more useful approach is a structured four-factor self-test that assesses your specific version of your role. The four factors are: how routine vs novel your work is, how digital vs physical your outputs are, how solo vs relational your daily work is, and how easily you could be replaced if you left tomorrow. Each factor maps to something AI can or cannot handle well.
This test takes about ten minutes to run honestly. The results are more informative than any published occupation ranking because they reflect your actual task mix rather than a statistical average across thousands of people with your job title. The WEF's 2026 data shows 41% of employers planning AI-driven headcount reductions. Knowing your specific score on these four factors tells you whether you are likely to be in that 41%'s impact zone.
What the research says
92M
jobs displaced by 2030
WEF Future of Jobs 2025
170M
new roles created by 2030
WEF Future of Jobs 2025
41%
of employers plan AI-driven headcount reductions
WEF 2025
55K
job cuts explicitly attributed to AI in 2024
Challenger, Gray and Christmas
The four factors are: (1) Routine vs novel: how much of your day is spent on tasks you have done many times before in essentially the same way? (2) Digital vs physical: is the core output of your role a file, a document, or a data record, or does it require your body to be somewhere? (3) Solo vs relational: do you produce your output largely independently, or does it depend on ongoing human relationships and trust? (4) Replaceable vs irreplaceable: if you left tomorrow, how long would it take to replace you with someone of equivalent value?
Score each factor from 1 to 3, where 1 is the high-risk end and 3 is the protected end. For routine vs novel: 1 if most work is identical repetition, 3 if most work is genuinely new each time. For digital vs physical: 1 if all output is digital, 3 if all output requires physical presence. For solo vs relational: 1 if you work entirely independently, 3 if your value depends on specific ongoing relationships. For replaceable vs irreplaceable: 1 if you could be replaced in days, 3 if it would take months and significant knowledge transfer. A total of 10 or above suggests a relatively protected role.
A low score (below 7) does not mean your job will disappear tomorrow, but it does mean you have significant task-level exposure that warrants action. The appropriate response is to identify which factor you can move most quickly: adding relational responsibilities, seeking novel problem-solving work, or building institutional knowledge that makes replacement costly. Even a small shift on one dimension can meaningfully change your overall risk profile.
A few occupations score high on all four: specialist surgeons (physical, highly novel per patient, deeply relational, and extraordinarily difficult to replace), senior crisis negotiators (physical presence required, every situation is unique, trust is personal, and experience is irreplaceable), and master tradespeople with rare specialisations. These roles are at the far-safe end. Most people's roles sit somewhere in the middle, with a mix of exposed and protected factors.
Published rankings (such as those from Oxford Economics or the OECD) assess average exposure across a job category. The four-factor self-test assesses your specific version of your role, which can diverge significantly from the average. A data scientist at a startup doing truly novel research is very differently exposed than a data scientist at a large bank running monthly regulatory reports, even though they share a job title. The self-test captures that distinction; rankings do not.
Free Assessment
Free Fossil Score assessment. No account required.
Get My Fossil Score