{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/receptionists-and-information-clerks/",
  "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": "Receptionists and Information Clerks",
    "soc_code": "43-4171",
    "category": "Office",
    "us_employment": 910180,
    "median_annual_wage": 38010
  },
  "verdict": "COOKED",
  "risk_resistance": 28,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 5,
    "embodiment": 10,
    "liability_shield": 1,
    "trust_premium": 8,
    "judgment_accountability": 4
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Call routing, message-taking, appointment booking and confirmation reminders, visitor log entry, and answering \"what are your hours / where is Suite 300\" are the bulk of the shift, and each of those is already shipped as a product — which is why this sits at 5 rather than 10; the only tasks that don't fall are the ones that need a body in the lobby, not a different kind of thinking.",
    "embodiment": "You are tied to a specific chair in a specific lobby — badging visitors in, signing for FedEx, buzzing the door, walking someone to a conference room — so this isn't remote-capable screen work, but it's a climate-controlled front desk with no tools, no lifting beyond a package, and no unpredictable site conditions, which caps it at 10 instead of the high teens a field technician earns.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licence, no board, no certification exam gates the front desk; a temp agency can place someone tomorrow, and when a message is lost or a wrong visitor is admitted the exposure lands on the employer's policy, not on you personally — hence 1 rather than 0 only because HIPAA-covered front desks carry a thin, employer-mediated confidentiality duty.",
    "trust_premium": "Regulars at a dental practice or small law office do know your name and that familiarity smooths their visit, which is why this isn't a 3, but nobody chooses the clinic because of who is at the desk and the relationship survives your replacement by next Tuesday — that ceiling is what keeps it at 8.",
    "judgment_accountability": "The decisions are scripted or escalated: who gets put through, who waits, who gets the manager, which form to hand over, and the genuinely ambiguous calls — admitting an angry non-appointment patient, a security concern, a billing dispute — get pushed up the chain rather than owned, leaving 4 for the real triage discretion in how you sequence a full waiting room."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of this job — answering and routing calls, taking messages, booking and confirming appointments, entering visitor data, answering routine questions about hours, services, and directions — is already handled at usable quality by voice AI, scheduling bots, and self-check-in kiosks. What holds is the physical front desk: greeting people who walk in, issuing badges, taking deliveries, calming a frustrated patient or client, and being the human someone can walk up to. That presence is real but cheap to consolidate, which is why one receptionist increasingly covers what three used to.",
  "outlook": "Employment keeps declining through the 2030s as voice AI and self-check-in absorb phone and scheduling volume; the surviving jobs are in healthcare, schools, and secure buildings where a human must physically be at the door.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Physical-security and access-control mandates that require a staffed, human-verified visitor screening point rather than a kiosk — e.g. hospital infant-abduction and workplace-violence prevention requirements under Joint Commission Environment of Care standards, state hospital workplace-violence laws (CA SB 553, NY S4451A), and school visitor-screening statutes (Alyssa's Law-adjacent front-office rules) that name a person at the entrance, plus courthouse/clinic entry screening. Concrete watch item: a Joint Commission or state DOH survey citation for unstaffed check-in.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: this job genuinely has two tiers. Once routing, booking, confirmations and FAQ are fully absorbed by voice agents, what remains is exception handling — the walk-in whose insurance was denied, the person the bot could not parse, the angry visitor, the delivery that needs a signature and a decision. If headcount collapses onto that residue rather than being eliminated, the remaining role's non-automatable share rises even as total jobs fall.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "Narrow, segment-specific: luxury hotels, private wealth management, concierge medicine, and law firms that market a named human at the door, plus a visible backlash market (businesses advertising 'a real person answers our phone' after customer-satisfaction damage from voice bots). Also possible via state consumer laws requiring a human option on calls — CA AB 1018-style bot-disclosure and 'human alternative' provisions. Applies to a minority of the 910k and does not lift the occupation's floor.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Front desk formally designated as the accountable node in a safety or privacy protocol: HIPAA-facing patient identity verification where the desk owns the match, or an active-threat/lockdown role where the receptionist is the designated initiator under a written emergency plan (already written into many school and hospital plans). This is role-design change inside employers, not new law, and is checkable in job descriptions and emergency operations plans.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "No plausible route to liability_shield — there is no license, no scope of practice, and no personal liability to attach; every credible lever here is small and segment-limited. Even if all fire, this stays in the low-to-mid 40s with far fewer positions: the levers change what the surviving job looks like, not how many survive."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 1014900,
        "wage": 28390
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 1043630,
        "wage": 29140
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 1057370,
        "wage": 30050
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 968420,
        "wage": 31110
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 983150,
        "wage": 29950
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 1011170,
        "wage": 33960
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 1003820,
        "wage": 35840
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 964530,
        "wage": 37230
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 910180,
        "wage": 38010
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -10.3,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}