{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/industrial-organizational-psychologists/",
  "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": "Industrial-Organizational Psychologists",
    "soc_code": "19-3032",
    "category": "Science",
    "us_employment": 790,
    "median_annual_wage": 193950
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 41,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 8,
    "embodiment": 4,
    "liability_shield": 5,
    "trust_premium": 12,
    "judgment_accountability": 12
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "An 8 reflects that item-writing, factor analyses, validation tables, and 360-feedback narrative reports — the volume work billed by the hour — now come out of a model in minutes, while the residual defensible core is narrower: running a live focus group with unionized supervisors, deciding whether a criterion measure is contaminated, and defending a cut score under Uniform Guidelines scrutiny.",
    "embodiment": "A 4 is for the occasional on-site visit — observing assembly line tasks for a job analysis, sitting in on an assessment center as an assessor — inside client offices and plants where the physical demand is walking and watching, not handling anything.",
    "liability_shield": "At 5, the psychologist title is protected in many states and SIOP/ABPP credentials carry weight with sophisticated buyers, but I-O consulting to organizations is not a licensed act of practice, so a firm can staff a validation study with unlicensed master's-level analysts and nothing stops it.",
    "trust_premium": "A 12 rather than 16 recognizes that CHROs bring back the specific consultant who survived the last layoff round with them and can name their VPs, but much of the market is procurement-driven — engagement survey vendors, assessment platforms, RFP-awarded validation studies — where the contract, not the person, is the relationship.",
    "judgment_accountability": "12 is earned by calls like whether an integrity test's adverse impact is justified by business necessity, whether to tell the CEO their pet competency model is unvalidated, and how to sequence a restructuring communication — high-consequence but usually advisory, with the client executive owning the decision and the legal exposure."
  },
  "rationale": "The bread-and-butter deliverables — survey instrument drafting, job analysis write-ups, competency models, engagement report summaries, literature reviews, and standard psychometric runs — are exactly the text-and-statistics work current AI does at usable quality. What holds is the part where a named expert stands behind a selection system in an EEOC adverse-impact challenge, facilitates a leadership team through a restructuring they don't want, and decides which construct actually predicts performance in this specific job. Licensure rarely binds I-O practice (unlike clinical psychology), so the shield is thin; the moat is client trust and expert-witness-grade accountability, not regulation.",
  "outlook": "A small field gets smaller on the report-writing side and reorients around algorithmic-hiring audit, litigation defense, and in-person executive advisory work.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "AI hiring-tool audit mandates that name a qualified assessment professional as the signing auditor: NYC Local Law 144 already requires annual independent bias audits of automated employment decision tools, and Illinois HB 3773 (effective 2026) plus Colorado SB 24-205 create adjacent duties. If a state board or EEOC guidance specifies that the validation/adverse-impact audit must be attested by a named I-O psychologist or SIOP-credentialed practitioner with personal liability, the shield moves from 'thin' to binding.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 6
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "Courts continuing to treat the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (29 CFR 1607) validation record as requiring identified expert authorship — e.g. Daubert exclusion of an AI-generated validation study with no qualified human sponsor, as in EEOC v. iTutorGroup-style enforcement or the Mobley v. Workday litigation. Each such ruling makes the human signature non-optional in defensible selection systems.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if survey drafting, competency-model boilerplate, and standard psychometric runs are fully absorbed by tooling, the residual role is construct choice, criterion definition, adverse-impact strategy, and defending methodology under cross-examination — work that cannot be scored from a corpus because it depends on undisclosed client facts and litigation posture. Watch for consultancy staffing shifting to senior-only I-O rosters with no junior analyst tier.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If AI-driven selection tools become the default and organizations need a human owner of the go/no-go call on deploying a scored model — analogous to the model-risk 'accountable executive' under SR 11-7 in banking — the I-O psychologist becomes the named validity owner for a system that decides employment. Watch for enterprise AI governance charters that name an assessment scientist as approver.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Employee-facing work where AI attribution destroys the product: engagement diagnostics and restructuring facilitation depend on employees believing a human, not the employer's model, read their comments. If works councils or union contracts (already common in German co-determination and appearing in some US organizing agreements) specify a human third-party interpreter of employee survey data, the premium is contractual rather than sentimental.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Very small occupation (790 workers) with most economically similar work done under other titles (HR analytics, management consulting), so title-level protections generalize poorly. Licensure is the big absent lever and unlikely: state psychology boards have historically exempted organizational consulting from practice acts, and SIOP has not pursued a practice monopoly. Without that, ceiling is roughly mid-50s."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 920,
        "wage": 87100
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 780,
        "wage": 97260
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 630,
        "wage": 92880
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 780,
        "wage": 96270
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 610,
        "wage": 105310
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 1280,
        "wage": 139280
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 1030,
        "wage": 147420
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 1050,
        "wage": 109840
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 790,
        "wage": 193950
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -14.1,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}