Metro area, California
San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA
1,538,060 people work in this area, at mean pay of $79,060 a year (BLS, May 2025), in every industry. What follows is how much of their working time the best AI models could finish, when, and in which jobs and tasks. Estimates.
of the paid hours. Estimate.
a year: 668 million hours at what they cost. Not a forecast of savings.
- 39%
- 17%
- 44%
of the paid hours are within reach now in tasks people already bring to Claude. Another 17% is within reach in tasks not yet seen there.
Across the US: 22% within reach now and 37% by the end of 2028, on the long-run pace at four in five.
Share of the paid hours within reach, now to 2030
What each choice means: , , , , . Every pace starts from .
How far this has come
With GPT-4, measured in March 2023, 0% of this area's paid hours were within reach at . With Claude 3.7 Sonnet, measured in February 2025, 2%. With Claude Mythos Preview (early), measured in April 2026, 19%. Today's estimate: 22%.
A backcast: today's task data with the best model METR had measured by each date. It shows how fast the models have moved, not what anyone forecast at the time.
Where the hours are
Jobs by hours within reach now. The 40 largest jobs hold 45% of the people.
| People | Pay here | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office Clerks, General | 28,470 | 54% | 32 million | $50K |
| Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks | 12,830 | 78% | 21 million | $59K |
| Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants | 11,260 | 81% | 19 million | $52K |
| Customer Service Representatives | 14,030 | 64% | 19 million | $49K |
| Registered Nurses | 28,680 | 28% | 17 million | $140K |
| Retail Salespersons | 34,390 | 19% | 14 million | $38K |
| General and Operations Managers | 26,230 | 23% | 12 million | $120K |
| Cashiers | 30,420 | 19% | 12 million | $37K |
| First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers | 12,920 | 40% | 11 million | $47K |
| Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive | 12,070 | 43% | 11 million | $55K |
| Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel | 11,730 | 43% | 10 million | $75K |
| First-Line Supervisors of Office and Administrative Support Workers | 11,780 | 35% | 8.5 million | $76K |
People: BLS counts for this area, May 2025. Pay here: the median paid for the job in this area, else its mean, else the national median. 641 smaller jobs (817,990 people) count in every total but are not listed. Task data covers 96% of the area's people; the rest are in BLS "all other" groups with no task list, or in counts BLS does not publish.
The tasks with the most hours within reach by the end of 2028
Across the whole area, on the chosen pace and reliability.
- Compute, record, and proofread data and other information, such as records or reports.Office Clerks, General7.1 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Modify existing software to correct errors, adapt it to new hardware, or upgrade interfaces and improve performance.Software Developers5.8 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Develop sales presentations or proposals to explain service specifications.Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel5 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Perform administrative or managerial functions, such as taking responsibility for a unit's staff, budget, planning, or long-range goals.Registered Nurses4.8 million hours60% of the task within reach
- Develop and implement records management program for filing, protection, and retrieval of records, and assure compliance with program.Management Analysts4.5 million hours76% of the task within reach
- Perform bookkeeping duties, such as credits or collections, preparing and sending financial statements or bills, and keeping financial records.Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants4.5 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Keep periodic balance sheets of amounts and numbers of transactions.Cashiers4.5 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Operate computers programmed with accounting software to record, store, and analyze information.Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks4.2 million hours100% of the task within reach
- Maintain knowledge of current sales and promotions, policies regarding payment and exchanges, and security practices.Retail Salespersons4.2 million hours50% of the task within reach
- Analyze user needs and software requirements to determine feasibility of design within time and cost constraints.Software Developers4 million hours70% of the task within reach
Other areas in California
Within reach now and by the end of 2028, long-run pace, four in five.
- Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA6,271,560 people22% now, 37% by 2028
- San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA2,373,920 people21% now, 41% by 2028
- Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA1,716,760 people20% now, 30% by 2028
- San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA1,134,970 people21% now, 44% by 2028
- Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA1,080,590 people22% now, 37% by 2028
- Fresno, CA476,890 people20% now, 30% by 2028
- Bakersfield-Delano, CA338,230 people19% now, 29% by 2028
- Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA323,890 people21% now, 35% by 2028
How it is built: BLS counts the people in each job in this area; each job's tasks and their lengths give its share within reach at a date; the area's share is those shares weighted by people. Value is pay times 1.43 for benefits and payroll costs. Seen in Claude use splits today's share by whether Anthropic saw people bring each task to Claude in 2025; other AI tools are not counted. How it works