{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/executive-secretaries-and-executive-administrative-assistants/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants",
    "soc_code": "43-6011",
    "category": "Office",
    "us_employment": 459910,
    "median_annual_wage": 76590
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 35,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 6,
    "embodiment": 7,
    "liability_shield": 2,
    "trust_premium": 12,
    "judgment_accountability": 8
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Calendar deconfliction across time zones, inbox triage and first-draft replies, booking flights and hotels against a travel policy, Concur expense coding, and turning notes into minutes or a deck are all tasks a current LLM plus a scheduling integration completes end-to-end, which is why this sits at 6 rather than in the mixed band — the automatable work is the bulk of the hours, not a slice of them.",
    "embodiment": "A 7 covers the real but bounded physical tier: escorting and badging visitors, setting up the boardroom and its AV, handling couriered signature packets and confidential paper for shredding, and standing in the hallway before a board meeting — all inside one predictable office, which is why it does not reach the 13+ band of uncontrolled sites.",
    "liability_shield": "No licence, no statute, no registration gates this work; CAP or IAAP-CAP certification exists and is occasionally listed as preferred, but an executive can hire whoever they trust tomorrow, and any error in a filing, contract routing, or disclosure lands on the executive or general counsel who signed — hence 2, not 0, only because a few employers pay for the credential.",
    "trust_premium": "12 reflects that the executive genuinely will not swap you out casually — you hold the personal calendar, the family's phone numbers, pre-announcement M&A knowledge, and the read on which VP is safe to bump — but the relationship is with one principal and generally does not survive their departure, and the external parties you deflect deal with the role, not with you.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Deciding who gets fifteen minutes, which escalation goes to the executive tonight versus Monday, and how to phrase a refusal without burning a relationship is genuine unwritten discretion, but the stakes are the executive's time and goodwill rather than money, safety, or legal exposure, and most of the day runs on standing instructions and travel policy — that pins it at 8, not the 14+ of someone who owns the call itself."
  },
  "rationale": "The bulk of the day — calendar juggling, email triage and drafting, travel itineraries, expense reports, meeting minutes, slide and memo prep — is precisely what current AI assistants and scheduling tools already do at usable quality. What survives is the trusted-gatekeeper tier: reading the executive's political landscape, deciding who gets time and who gets deflected, handling confidential matters, and physically running events and visitors. The modal worker supports a mid-level executive with a heavy routine-document load, so exposure is real even though the top tier of the occupation is functionally a chief of staff.",
  "outlook": "Headcount keeps declining as one assistant plus AI tooling covers what two or three did, while the surviving roles drift toward chief-of-staff work with real decision rights.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: if scheduling, expense, travel and minute-taking are fully absorbed by Copilot/Gemini-style agents, the residual role is gatekeeping, discretion on access, confidential handling, and event execution — a real second tier. This raises task_resistance only for the subset whose title survives as chief of staff / executive business partner; for the modal mid-level support role the residual is thin and the job is eliminated rather than upgraded.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "If the role formally absorbs onsite duties that hybrid work made scarce and valuable — visitor and VIP escort, secure-document courier and shredding, physical badge and access management, executive floor/boardroom setup, offsite and board-meeting logistics run in person — the day becomes materially more physical. Visible in RTO-era job postings retitled 'Executive Assistant & Workplace Experience'.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Board and C-suite work where the buyer explicitly pays for a human who holds pre-announcement material nonpublic information: if firms adopt policies barring third-party AI agents from board calendars, minutes, and executive mailboxes (a pattern already appearing in bank and defense-contractor AI-use policies, and reinforced by state comprehensive-privacy and EU AI Act workplace rules), the human is the only permitted channel for that class of information.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If the role is formally reconstituted as chief of staff or executive business partner with named ownership of access decisions, delegated spend approval authority, and signatory limits on the executive's behalf — an explicit line in the org chart and delegation-of-authority matrix rather than an informal habit — the consequential-calls-under-ambiguity content becomes documented rather than invisible.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Narrow route only: designation as a records custodian or corporate secretary's delegate with personal duties under litigation-hold and retention rules (FRCP 37(e) preservation obligations, SEC Rule 17a-4 for broker-dealers), or as a named notary. This is a real but small carve-out and applies to few incumbents.",
        "plausibility": "unlikely",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "No licensure exists or is being proposed for this occupation, so liability_shield has almost no headroom. The upside levers apply overwhelmingly to the top tier supporting C-suite and boards; the modal worker supporting a mid-level executive with a document load has no realistic path to a higher score, and the likely outcome there is fewer positions rather than upgraded ones."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 596080,
        "wage": 57410
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 570530,
        "wage": 59340
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 542690,
        "wage": 60890
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 503390,
        "wage": 63110
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 466910,
        "wage": 62060
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 475240,
        "wage": 65980
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 483570,
        "wage": 70310
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 472770,
        "wage": 74260
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 459910,
        "wage": 76590
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -22.8,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}