{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/residential-advisors/", "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": "Residential Advisors", "soc_code": "39-9041", "category": "Personal Care", "us_employment": 84760, "median_annual_wage": 42240 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 63, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 15, "embodiment": 17, "liability_shield": 5, "trust_premium": 14, "judgment_accountability": 12 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "A 15 rather than a 19 reflects that the shift-report writing, room draw and roommate matching, meal-count and occupancy tracking, and the referral paperwork you file after an incident are genuinely drafted faster by a model — but the bed check at 2am, the hand on a door during a fight, and the walk-through after a resident's roommate reports a smell are not tasks a system can pick up.", "embodiment": "You work inside the residence itself — dorm floors, group home kitchens, shelter bunk rooms — where an uncontrolled environment means a resident in crisis, a fire alarm, a wet stairwell, vomit at 4am, and an intoxicated arrival at the door; 17 instead of 20 only because the setting is a building you know rather than a street or wilderness.", "liability_shield": "Most residential advisor postings ask for a high school diploma plus CPR/first aid and sometimes a state-specific mandated-reporter or crisis-intervention certificate; the licensed clinician, program director, or dean of students carries the professional liability, and your name on an incident report is testimony, not sign-off.", "trust_premium": "Residents disclose the suicidal thought, the relapse, or the abuse at home to the overnight staffer they have seen every night for six months — not to the intake form — and that continuity is why 14 fits: the relationship is most of the job's value, though the coverage function means shifts can be filled by another trusted adult.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide in the moment whether a fight is a redirect or a police call, whether a curfew violation is written up or absorbed, and whether tonight's behavior meets the mandated-reporting threshold — real discretion with real consequences, but bounded by a program handbook, an on-call supervisor, and escalation protocols that keep it at 12 rather than 17." }, "rationale": "The modal residential advisor — dorm staff, group home and halfway house workers, youth shelter overnight staff — spends the day physically present with residents: bed checks, de-escalating conflicts, walking someone to a medical appointment, enforcing curfew, noticing that a resident stopped eating. None of that digitizes, and robotics is nowhere near it. What AI does erode is the paperwork layer: incident reports, shift logs, occupancy and roommate assignment, activity scheduling, and referral letters to social services. The real threat to this job is budget and staffing pressure, not a model taking the shift.", "outlook": "The in-person supervision core is durable through the next decade; expect AI to absorb the reporting and scheduling load while headcount is squeezed by facility budgets rather than software.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "State licensing of residential care/group home staff with named-staff accountability — e.g. mandatory certification and minimum staffing ratios for children's residential facilities under the federal Family First Prevention Services Act QRTP standards, or state group-home rules requiring a certified staff member on duty per shift who signs incident reports and restraint documentation. Certification plus personal signature on restraint/seclusion and medication-administration records converts the role into a required human of record.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Post-scandal consent decrees and state legislation after deaths in youth residential facilities (the pattern following Congressional investigations into residential treatment programs) imposing per-resident supervision documentation signed by a named on-shift staffer, with licensure sanctions for falsification.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Codified suicide-risk and mandatory-reporter protocols that place the initial call — hospitalize, restrain, call police, notify guardian — explicitly on the on-duty advisor rather than a remote supervisor; some state Medicaid behavioral-health licensing rules and Joint Commission behavioral health accreditation already push documentation of who made the call.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Task-mix shift: if AI absorbs shift logs, occupancy and roommate assignment, and referral letters, the remaining shift is de-escalation, risk assessment and crisis triage — the judgment tier. This raises effective judgment weight without any legal change.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Same two-tier shift as above: the residual job is unstructured interpersonal crisis work, which is the part current models cannot do at usable quality. Note this raises the score of the job that remains while reducing headcount per facility.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Union contracts (SEIU, AFSCME locals covering group home and shelter staff) or state Medicaid rate-setting that price minimum awake-staff coverage per resident and bar substitution by remote monitoring — Washington and Oregon have fought over electronic-monitoring substitution in supported living. A rule that camera/sensor monitoring cannot count toward staffing minimums makes the buyer pay for a human by law.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, the binding constraint is public and nonprofit budgets. Higher liability and staffing floors raise the score per remaining position but do not stop facilities from cutting beds, consolidating sites, or replacing overnight awake staff with sensor monitoring where regulators permit it. Trust premium is capped because the payer is rarely the resident." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 110720, "wage": 26830 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 108380, "wage": 27860 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 107930, "wage": 29450 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 102450, "wage": 31190 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 92500, "wage": 31220 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 86770, "wage": 35720 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 88700, "wage": 37950 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 82810, "wage": 39180 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 84760, "wage": 42240 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -23.4, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "flight-attendants", "title": "Flight Attendants", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 73, "median_wage": 63580, "overlap": 69, "skills_to_close": [] }, { "slug": "special-education-teachers-secondary-school", "title": "Special Education Teachers, Secondary School", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 73, "median_wage": 74260, "overlap": 68, "skills_to_close": [ "Learning Strategies", "Instructing", "Reading Comprehension", "Writing" ] }, { "slug": "police-and-sheriff-s-patrol-officers", "title": "Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 82, "median_wage": 76210, "overlap": 68, "skills_to_close": [ "Reading Comprehension", "Active Learning", "Operation and Control", "Judgment and Decision Making" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }