COOKED
The job is reading a script over the phone, handling a short list of predictable objections, and logging the outcome in a CRM — all three are now handled by conversational voice AI at lower cost and unlimited volume. Employment has already fallen sharply from its 2000s peak as predictive dialers and IVR absorbed the work, and current voice models close the remaining gap on tone and objection handling. There is no license, no physical presence, and buyers on the other end of the line are not paying for the relationship.
Most of this decline happened after 2021 — it is not the pandemic dip.
Median pay $26,290 → $35,450 +7.9% 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
-22.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 58,430 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -22.1% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
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.
~6,500 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
SolicitorCall AgentTelemarketerDonation WorkerTelesales AgentScheduling AgentCall Center AgentDirect Sales AgentMarketing ProcessorTelephone SolicitorCall Center OperatorContact Center AgentInbound TelemarketerOutbound Sales AgentTelesales SpecialistOutbound TelemarketerTelephone Sales AgentCall Center Sales AgentCall Center TelemarketerInbound Call Center AgentTelephone Sales Representative (TSR)Telephone Service Representative (TSR)Telesales Representative (Telesales Rep)Call Center Representative (Call Center Rep)
Holding it up: trust premium . Weakest point: liability shield .
Core tasks are already automatable The dialer already picks the number, the screen already supplies the pitch and the rebuttal tree, and the only human contribution left is producing the audio — which is precisely what synthetic voice with sub-second latency now does, so this sits at 2 rather than 7 because there is no off-script residue like site inspection or credit assessment to fall back on.
Fully desk- and screen-based You sit in a headset at a workstation; nothing in the job requires touching, carrying, or going anywhere, and the 1 rather than 0 is only the fact that a body currently occupies a seat in a call center for shift-supervision purposes.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licences telemarketers; TCPA, the Do Not Call Registry, and state telemarketing registration bind the seller and the calling firm, not the individual on the phone, so a compliance violation costs the company statutory damages and costs you the shift, not a credential.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Your discretion runs to picking rebuttal 3 instead of rebuttal 4 and deciding when to release the call; pricing, offer terms, credit approval, and the disclosure language are all locked upstream, which is why this is 2 and not the 8 a commissioned outside rep would get for negotiating terms.
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 (2/20 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 (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (3/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (2/20) 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 6 of this occupation's 9 points (67%).
Embodiment (1/20) 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.
Retail Salespersons EXPOSED
Concierges EXPOSED
Waiters and Waitresses EXPOSED
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 23/100, still COOKED.
The FCC's Feb 2024 declaratory ruling already makes AI-generated voices 'artificial or prerecorded' under the TCPA, requiring prior express written consent; the pending AI-disclosure NPRM (CG Docket 23-362) would add mandatory 'this is an AI voice' disclosure at call start. If that finalizes AND states layer on sector rules — e.g. an insurance or securities regulator requiring that any solicitation resulting in an application be conducted by a registered/licensed human (FINRA Rule 2210-style supervision of 'retail communications'), the compliant channel for regulated products becomes a named human on a recorded line. Watch state insurance departments and the NAIC AI model bulletin adoption.
Two-tier split is real: the outbound-cold tier is gone, the remaining tier is complex B2B qualification, appointment-setting into six-figure deals, and Medicare Advantage / final-expense sales where the caller must navigate eligibility facts the caller misstates. If AI-disclosure requirements make disclosed-AI calls answer-rate-collapse (already visible in early carrier spam-labeling data), the survivor headcount is entirely judgment-tier and the measured score of the remaining job rises even as employment falls.
If CMS's third-party marketing organization rules (already tightened for Medicare Advantage in the 2024/2025 rules, with recorded-call retention and scope-of-appointment requirements) extend to naming an accountable individual agent for each enrollment, the caller personally owns a consequential eligibility call under ambiguity rather than reading a script.
Carrier-level authentication (STIR/SHAKEN attestation plus branded caller ID) makes 'verified human agent at a named firm' a purchasable signal; some outbound health-plan and financial firms already market human-only contact as a compliance and brand-safety feature after AI-voice fraud incidents. This is a thin, buyer-side (not consumer-side) premium — the person answering still does not want the call.
The limit. Even with every lever, this tops out around 25-30 and only for the regulated-product slice (Medicare, insurance, securities); those workers are increasingly classified as insurance agents (41-3021) rather than telemarketers, so the SOC code itself hollows out. Generic B2C outbound has no route at all — no license exists to create, and no consumer has ever preferred the call.
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 2,730 | $35,870 +1% |
| Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL | 2,240 | $33,490 -6% |
| Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV | 1,830 | $32,150 -9% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,550 | $42,450 +20% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 1,220 | $41,400 +17% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,210 | $40,040 +13% |
| St. Louis, MO-IL | 1,210 | $31,480 -11% |
| Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 1,170 | $33,900 -4% |
| Springfield, IL | 30 | $50,390 +42% |
| Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX | 270 | $49,700 +40% |
| Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC | 420 | $49,240 +39% |
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 9. 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.