Glossary

Automation pressure

The likelihood that an exposed task can move from a worker to software after workflow integration, quality controls, and employer adoption.

What this means in practice

Automation pressure is exposure filtered through practicality. A task only moves to software when the workflow around it is standardized, the quality bar is checkable, and an employer actually deploys the tool. All three conditions slow real-world substitution relative to raw capability.

Cashiers sit near the top of this measure because scanning and payment are standardized and self-checkout is already deployed at scale. By contrast, an Electrician's exposed tasks — reading plans, documenting work — stay pressure-low because the physical core of the job cannot be routed through software.

In the data

See this term in the occupation data

These published occupation pages show automation pressure in action — with task-level exposure, automation and augmentation scores, wage context, and transition pathways.