EXPOSED
Almost nothing a line cook does during service is text or screen work — you are breaking down proteins, working multiple pans on a hot line, adjusting seasoning by taste, and calling timing across a ticket rail in a cramped, chaotic space that today's robotics cannot handle. The real threat is not language AI but capital: central-kitchen prepped components, sous-vide and combi programs, and single-task fry/grill robots that let a restaurant run the same menu with fewer bodies. There is no license protecting the job and, for the modal line cook, the diner never knows your name, so the count of cooks per restaurant compresses even as the craft persists.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $27,790 → $37,390 +7.6% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+14.9% 1,460,200 → 1,677,200 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +14.9% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 57/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~250,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
CookSaucierFry CookLine CookGrill CookLarder CookPizza MakerBanquet CookBroiler CookStation CookRailroad CookBack Line CookBreakfast CookChef De PartieSpecialty CookVegetable CookProduction CookRestaurant CookSandwich ArtistSpecialty Foods CookHotel and Restaurant CookForeign Food Specialty CookPrep Cook (Preparation Cook)Prep Person (Preparation Person)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Butchering a case of chicken thighs, tasting a sauce for acid balance, and re-firing a table's entrees to land together at the pass are physical, sensory, judgment-under-time tasks with no digital analogue — the 17 rather than 20 reflects that recipe scaling, portion specs, and prep lists have already moved off the cook's head and onto printed sheets and back-office software.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You stand ten to twelve hours in 100°F+ line heat, moving between flat-top, fryer, and walk-in, handling knives and boiling stock in a space too tight for two people to pass — the 19 is because the kitchen is at least a fixed, mapped room, unlike roofing or field repair.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licenses a line cook; the food handler card is a few hours of training and the health-code citation lands on the operator's permit and the certified food protection manager, not on you, so nothing legally requires a human in your specific position.
Meaningful discretion You decide when the pork is done by feel, whether that batch of stock gets pulled, and how to re-sequence six tickets when a table sends something back — real calls, but made inside a menu, plate spec, and cost target set by the chef, which is what keeps it at 9 instead of the 14+ of someone who owns the menu and the food cost.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (17/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (9/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (9/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 21 of this occupation's 57 points (37%).
Embodiment (19/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to cooks, restaurant on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 68/100 — SAFE.
If FDA Food Code adoption cycles keep pushing the Person-in-Charge / Certified Food Protection Manager requirement deeper into the line (many states already require a CFPM on premises during all hours of operation), the senior cook who is PIC on a shift owns HACCP calls, cooling-log decisions, and allergen refusals with a name attached, and health-department citations follow that name.
Task-mix shift: if central-kitchen components and combi/sous-vide programs absorb the routine prep and hold tier, the remaining role concentrates on butchery, à la minute cookery, seasoning-by-taste, substitution for allergies, and expediting timing under a crushed ticket rail. Fewer cooks per restaurant, but each remaining job is harder to automate. Watch headcount-per-cover falling while the job title's task inventory shifts toward station-lead work.
Menu-labeling or 'made from scratch' disclosure norms that force restaurants to declare centrally-prepped/reheated components — analogous to the 'fresh vs. previously frozen' seafood rules and existing state 'fresh-baked' labeling actions — would let scratch kitchens charge a visible premium for on-site cooking, and with it the cooks who do it. Also open-kitchen/chef's-counter formats where the diner watches and pays for the hand.
A narrow route only: state or municipal rules requiring a named, certified food protection manager to personally sign off on HACCP plans, reduced-oxygen packaging (ROP) variances, or sous-vide programs — already required for ROP variances in many jurisdictions — plus allergen-training mandates on the Illinois/Massachusetts model. This attaches to the certified lead, not the modal line cook, so the ceiling is low.
The limit. Embodiment is already near max and cannot rise; task_resistance at 17 has little headroom. The real risk is not scored here — it is headcount compression per restaurant from capital substitution, which the register does not measure. An occupation can hold a high resistance score while shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs. Liability and trust levers attach mostly to chefs and station leads, so they do not protect the modal anonymous line cook.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 69,250 | $43,740 +17% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 54,320 | $44,460 +19% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 41,690 | $38,930 +4% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 37,210 | $36,920 -1% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 34,430 | $36,490 -2% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 32,710 | $35,050 -6% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 29,670 | $42,920 +15% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 29,040 | $37,230 +0% |
| Kahului-Wailuku, HI | 1,770 | $49,560 +33% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 20,850 | $47,730 +28% |
| Napa, CA | 1,270 | $47,320 +27% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 57. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.