{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/operations-research-analysts/", "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": "Operations Research Analysts", "soc_code": "15-2031", "category": "Tech", "us_employment": 108510, "median_annual_wage": 88940 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 34, "contested": false, "near_boundary": true, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 9, "embodiment": 3, "liability_shield": 2, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 12 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Writing the LP formulation, tuning solver parameters in Gurobi/CPLEX, building discrete-event simulations, and generating sensitivity tables are all things an LLM now does at first-draft quality; the 9 rather than a 5 reflects that the problem-framing step — deciding that a nurse-scheduling complaint is actually a demand-forecasting failure, and that the constraint the client insists on is the one to relax — still requires sitting in rooms with operations staff who cannot state their own objective function.", "embodiment": "A 3 rather than 0 accounts for the occasional plant walkthrough, warehouse time-and-motion observation, or ride-along to see why the routing model's assumptions don't match how drivers actually load the truck — real, but a few days a quarter against a full-time seat in front of a solver and a BI tool.", "liability_shield": "There is no state license, no PE-style stamp, and no statutory sign-off on an optimization recommendation; the 2 rather than 0 is only for the narrow slice working under DoD/FFRDC clearance requirements or SOX-adjacent model-governance regimes, where the barrier is the clearance and the model-validation paperwork, not the analyst's credential.", "trust_premium": "An 8 rather than a 3 recognizes that internal analysts who have earned the plant manager's or the CFO's confidence get their recommendations adopted while equally correct models from outside consultants get shelved — but the deliverable is still a deck and a model file that can be handed to a successor, so the relationship accelerates adoption rather than constituting the product.", "judgment_accountability": "A 12 sits above procedural work because you choose the objective — minimize cost, or minimize worst-case delay, or keep the union contract intact — and that choice is a value judgment nobody hands you in a spec; it stops short of 14+ because the executive who approves the network redesign owns the consequence, and your name appears on the analysis, not the decision." }, "rationale": "The daily work — pulling and cleaning data, coding optimization and simulation models in Python/R, running scenario analyses, and writing up findings in decks and memos — sits squarely in the zone current AI handles at usable quality. What persists is upstream: correctly framing a messy business problem as a solvable model, choosing which constraints and objectives actually reflect what the organization wants, and defending a recommendation that reroutes a supply chain or reshapes a staffing plan. There is no license and no signature requirement, so nothing regulatory slows the substitution; the modal analyst's output is an artifact, not a relationship.", "outlook": "Headcount likely flattens or shrinks as one senior analyst plus AI covers what a team of three did, with the surviving roles concentrated in stakeholder-facing model design and decision ownership rather than model building.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift is genuine here: the occupation has a routine tier (data pull, model coding, scenario runs, deck production) and a judgment tier (problem framing, constraint elicitation from stakeholders who disagree, validating that an optimum is not an artifact of a mis-specified objective). If headcount contracts to the framing/validation tier, the residual job's untractable share rises. Watch for job postings shifting from 'build models in Python' to 'translate business problems and audit model outputs'.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Model risk management regimes extending beyond credit/finance to operational optimization. Concretely: if the Fed/OCC SR 11-7 style model validation requirement, or the EU AI Act's high-risk obligations for workforce-management and critical-infrastructure systems, are read to cover staffing-allocation and network-routing optimizers, a named human must document intended use, challenge assumptions, and own the sign-off on model limitations. Analysts in banks and insurers already do this as 'model validation' roles.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "No license exists and none is being proposed, so the only realistic route is contractual/internal rather than statutory: professional-body credentialing (INFORMS' Certified Analytics Professional) becoming a named requirement in federal contracting or in E&O insurance conditions for consultancies, or a named 'model owner' attestation required under an internal MRM policy. This is a weak shield — it does not create personal legal liability — so the gain is small.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow and only in adversarial settings: expert-witness and regulatory-testimony work (damages models, antitrust market simulations, capacity-adequacy filings at FERC/state PUCs) where a tribunal requires a human author who can be cross-examined on methodology. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert already force a named human expert. This applies to a small slice of the occupation, not the modal analyst.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Realistic ceiling is roughly the mid-40s. The core constraint is structural: there is no licensure pathway in motion, the output is a deliverable rather than a relationship, and the buyer is an internal executive who has no reason to pay a premium for human authorship. The bulk of any upside is task-mix contraction into the framing tier — which raises the score per surviving worker while reducing how many workers survive." }, "adjudication": { "method": "two independent runs agreed on the verdict", "outcome": "corroborated", "run_totals": [ 34, 34 ], "run_verdicts": [ "EXPOSED", "EXPOSED" ] }, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 106050, "wage": 81390 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 104200, "wage": 83390 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 99680, "wage": 84810 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 96220, "wage": 86200 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 98700, "wage": 82360 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 105080, "wage": 85720 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 117880, "wage": 83640 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 107760, "wage": 91290 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 108510, "wage": 88940 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 2.3, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "aerospace-engineers", "title": "Aerospace Engineers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "median_wage": 134960, "overlap": 72, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Quality Control Analysis", "Operations Monitoring", "Negotiation" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }