AI exposure: Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers
Sell goods or services door-to-door or on the street.
Reading this score
computed45.7% of this occupation's weighted task load is exposed, which puts Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers at the 83th percentile of 923 occupations. The capability is largely there. Its average task scores 2.4 out of 4 on what a current system can produce, and the frictions that hold other jobs in place are comparatively weak here.
No single friction dominates this occupation. The strongest is context at 1.46 out of 3 and the weakest is accountability at 0.38, which is a narrow spread. Where nothing structural stands in the way, exposure tracks capability almost directly, and capability is the thing that changes every quarter.
The most exposed thing this job does is Develop prospect lists, at 80.0%. The least is Stock carts or stands, at 0.0%. A gap of 80.0% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within sales occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 50.0% across the group's 22 roles, with 15 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 12 tasks, 9 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 3 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take capability alone, since there is little structural friction here to slow adoption once a system can do the work. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Task by task
12 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Develop prospect lists. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 4.41 | exposed |
| Answer questions about product features and benefits. | 80.0% | 20.0% | 0.0% | 4.17 | exposed |
| Arrange buying parties and solicit sponsorship of such parties to sell merchandise. | 64.2% | 23.3% | 12.5% | 4.22 | exposed |
| Deliver merchandise and collect payment. | 61.3% | 26.2% | 12.5% | 4.32 | exposed |
| Write and record orders for merchandise or enter orders into computers. | 55.0% | 20.0% | 25.0% | 4.32 | exposed |
| Circulate among potential customers or travel by foot, truck, automobile, or bicycle to deliver or sell merchandise or services. | 50.0% | 25.0% | 25.0% | 3.95 | exposed |
| Order or purchase supplies. | 50.0% | 25.0% | 25.0% | 3.70 | exposed |
| Explain products or services and prices and demonstrate use of products. | 39.6% | 22.9% | 37.5% | 4.70 | exposed |
| Persuade customers to purchase merchandise or services. | 30.0% | 20.0% | 50.0% | 3.77 | exposed |
| Distribute product samples or literature that details products or services. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.96 | untouched |
| Set up and display sample merchandise at parties or stands. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.73 | untouched |
| Stock carts or stands. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 2.70 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 2.38 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 1.12 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.75 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.38 | 0-3 |
| Context | 1.46 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.62 | 0-3 |
What this means in practice
Where most of a role's weighted task load is exposed, the work that survives is usually the part of the job nobody wrote into the job description: deciding what should be produced rather than producing it, and being answerable for the result. The tasks lowest on this page are a better guide to where to spend your time than any general advice about the future of work.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.