{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/web-developers/", "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": "Web Developers", "soc_code": "15-1254", "category": "Tech", "us_employment": 70190, "median_annual_wage": 92650 }, "verdict": "COOKED", "risk_resistance": 24, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 6, "embodiment": 2, "liability_shield": 1, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 7 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Scaffolding a responsive layout, wiring a REST call, writing a contact-form validator, restyling a WordPress theme, and fixing a CSS breakpoint are all single-prompt outputs now, and since those tasks dominate the modal ticket queue the score sits at 6 rather than 12 — the residue that isn't one-pass is debugging a flaky third-party embed and untangling a decade-old jQuery codebase.", "embodiment": "The job runs entirely on a laptop over Git and Figma; the 2 rather than 0 covers testing on real iPhones and tablets in a device lab and the occasional trip to a client office or on-site photo shoot for asset capture.", "liability_shield": "There is no licensure, no registration board, no continuing-education requirement — anyone can ship production HTML, and when a site leaks card data or fails WCAG the exposure lands on the business owner or the agency's E&O policy, not on your name.", "trust_premium": "Freelancers and agency devs keep clients through referral and the fact that you already know why their checkout is wired weird, which is real switching cost, but the deliverable is a working site the client can hand to any other shop — an 8 reflects relationships that make you preferred, not irreplaceable.", "judgment_accountability": "You choose framework, state management, and CDN strategy and decide whether a hack ships before Friday, but scope, brand, and budget arrive from a designer, PM, or client — the 7 marks genuine technical discretion inside decisions someone else owns." }, "rationale": "The modal web developer builds and maintains sites and front-end features — HTML/CSS/JS, CMS theming, responsive layouts, form handling, API wiring, WordPress and Shopify customization — and that is precisely the work current models generate at usable quality in one pass. What persists is not the markup but the accountability: performance and accessibility audits that hold up under a lawsuit, security hardening, and the client conversation about what should be built. Note the split: agency/freelance site-builders are far more exposed than developers who own production systems, auth, payments, and uptime.", "outlook": "Expect the front-end implementation tier to contract sharply over ten years while a smaller group of developers who own production systems, security, and client relationships absorbs the surviving work at higher pay.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Accessibility law hardening: if DOJ's ADA Title II web rule (28 CFR Part 35, WCAG 2.1 AA, compliance deadlines 2026-27) is extended to Title III private commercial sites, or the European Accessibility Act's 2025 enforcement produces named-signatory conformance statements, a human would attest to VPAT/accessibility conformance and carry personal or firm liability for the claim. Similarly PCI-DSS 4.0's client-side script inventory requirements (6.4.3/11.6.1) already name an accountable party for payment-page JS.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift, already visible: the routine tier (markup, CMS theming, responsive layout, form wiring) is generated in one pass, leaving the tier models fail at — reproducing a Core Web Vitals regression in a live system, screen-reader testing against real assistive tech, CSP and supply-chain hardening after a third-party script compromise, and migration of legacy production data without downtime. This raises the score only for developers who own production systems; site-builders have no second tier to fall back into.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "If on-call and incident ownership becomes the formal core of the role — named incident commander in SOC 2 / ISO 27001 audits, breach-notification decision authority under state privacy laws — the role owns consequential calls under ambiguity rather than producing artifacts. Insurer cyber-policy underwriting increasingly demands a named technical owner for web-facing assets.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Narrow route only: buyers paying for provenance of code they can be sued over — a human-authored, human-reviewed attestation for regulated sectors (health portals, government procurement, financial disclosure pages). No plausible route for the general small-business site market, where price is the only variable and AI-generated sites are already the default.", "plausibility": "unlikely", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Even with every lever, this stays a low-to-mid score. There is no licensure for web development anywhere in the US, and none is being proposed by any state board or professional body, so liability_shield cannot approach the levels seen in engineering or medicine — the accountability attaches to the firm, not the individual. Embodiment has no route at all. The realistic ceiling is roughly 40-45, and it applies to developers who own production systems, not to the modal agency site-builder described here." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2021, "emp": 84820, "wage": 77030 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 88620, "wage": 78580 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 85350, "wage": 84960 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 78860, "wage": 90930 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 70190, "wage": 92650 } ], "from": 2021, "to": 2025, "change_pct": -17.2, "comparable_from": 2021, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "database-architects", "title": "Database Architects", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 38, "median_wage": 139500, "overlap": 86, "skills_to_close": [ "Systems Analysis" ] }, { "slug": "software-developers", "title": "Software Developers", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 41, "median_wage": 135980, "overlap": 81, "skills_to_close": [ "Technology Design", "Installation", "Operations Monitoring", "Troubleshooting" ] }, { "slug": "computer-occupations-all-other", "title": "Computer Occupations, All Other", "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 34, "median_wage": 116580, "overlap": 73, "skills_to_close": [ "Management of Personnel Resources", "Writing", "Monitoring" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }