EXPOSED
Dipped in 2020, then grew past where it started.
Median pay $33,400 → $44,080 +5.6% 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
+6% 1,215,000 → 1,288,000 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +6% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 62/100 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.
~183,900 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Crew ChiefBar ManagerCook ManagerBanquet CaptainCanteen ManagerDietary ManagerFood SupervisorKitchen ManagerDietary DirectorFloor SupervisorFountain ManagerShift SupervisorTea Room ManagerBartender ManagerCafeteria ManagerDairy Bar ManagerLunchroom ManagerSnack Bar ManagerBanquet SupervisorCounter SupervisorDietary SupervisorKitchen SupervisorRestaurant ManagerDining Room Captain
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Covering a fryer station when a cook walks out mid-rush, cutting a shift schedule around three call-outs, and calming a guest whose order came out wrong all happen in the same fifteen minutes — software can forecast labor and build a prep list, but it cannot stand in the pass and reassign four people in real time, which is why this lands at 14 rather than higher: the scheduling, inventory ordering, and sales-reporting paperwork genuinely is being absorbed by POS and labor-management systems.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments The job is spent on a wet, 100-degree line — wiping down the expo window, hauling walk-in deliveries, plunging a clogged floor drain, taking line temps with a probe thermometer, and physically demonstrating knife technique to a new prep cook — in a space where equipment fails and spills happen without warning, which is uncontrolled enough to sit at 17 while stopping short of the roadside and rooftop work that earns a 19.
Certification preferred, not legally required Most states require only a ServSafe Food Protection Manager certificate under the FDA Food Code's Person-in-Charge rule, plus a local health card — that's a real credential that puts your name on the inspection report and can be pulled, but it's a 40-question exam, not a licence with a board that disciplines you personally, so 7 reflects certification-preferred-and-often-mandated rather than protected practice.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether to discard a $400 case of chicken that spent an unknown time above 41°F, whether to cut off a visibly intoxicated guest, and whether to send home an employee coughing over open food — real calls with health-code and legal consequences that you own in the moment, though the district manager and corporate SOPs set the boundaries and absorb the fallout, which is why this is 13 rather than 16.
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 (14/20 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 (7/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (11/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) 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 31 of this occupation's 62 points (50%).
Embodiment (17/20) 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 first-line supervisors of food preparation and serving workers 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 72/100 — SAFE.
If franchise insurers or QSR corporate risk policies require a named human shift supervisor to make and document the ejection/refusal-of-service, minor-alcohol-service, and ill-employee-exclusion calls (FDA Food Code 2-201 reportable illness exclusion) rather than allowing kiosk or app escalation, the ambiguous consequential calls concentrate in this role. Liquor-license jurisdictions already pin over-service liability on the certified server/supervisor under dram shop statutes.
This role has a genuine two-tier structure: routine tier (scheduling, inventory ordering, par-level forecasting, labor-cost reporting) is already going to Crunchtime/Restaurant365/HotSchedules AI, while the judgment tier (de-escalating a walkout mid-rush, on-the-fly reassignment when a line cook no-shows, training a new hire's knife handling) is not. If the routine tier is stripped out, the remaining defined job is denser in the resistant tier — though headcount per store may fall even as per-person resistance rises.
Food-safety law already requires a Certified Food Protection Manager (ServSafe/CFPM) physically present per FDA Food Code 2-102.12; the raise comes if states or local health departments make the named PIC (person in charge) personally citable for HACCP log falsification and for signing off on AI-generated temperature/corrective-action records — as some jurisdictions already do for allergen control. Additional route: state labor-department rules making the on-shift supervisor personally liable for algorithmic scheduling compliance under predictive-scheduling ordinances (Oregon, NYC Fair Workweek, Chicago), where the supervisor's override of an AI-generated schedule is the citable act.
The limit. Trust premium is the honest refusal: diners essentially never choose a restaurant because a human supervises the line, and the buyer of this labor is the operator, not the guest. There is no realistic consumer-facing mechanism to raise it. Note also that liability and judgment gains here attach to a smaller number of supervisor slots per location — the dimension score can rise while total employment falls.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 61,060 | $48,690 +10% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 41,640 | $46,970 +7% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 39,780 | $37,730 -14% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 31,290 | $36,410 -17% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 30,180 | $42,650 -3% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 28,580 | $39,240 -11% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 24,770 | $45,500 +3% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 19,650 | $47,580 +8% |
| Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 12,090 | $61,610 +40% |
| Bremerton-Silverdale-Port Orchard, WA | 610 | $58,740 +33% |
| Bellingham, WA | 600 | $58,520 +33% |
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 62. 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.